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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030750628

NAVAL ADMINISTRATION
AND WARFARE

Works by Capt. A. T. Mahan

THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON
HISTORY. 1660-1783.

THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EM-
PIRE. Two volumes.

SEA POWER IN ITS RELATION TO THE
WAR OF 1812. Two volumes.

THE LIFE OF NELSON. Two volumes.

THE INTEREST OF AMERICA IN SEA
POWER.

LESSONS OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN.

THE PROBLEM OF ASIA.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

SOME NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF WAR.

NAVAL ADMINISTRATION AND WAR-
FARE.

TYPES OF NAVAL OFFICERS.

Naval Administration
and Warfare

Some General Principles

With Other Essays

BY

CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, U. S. N.

Author of " The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660- 1783,"

"The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution

and Empire," " Sea Power in Its Relations

to the War of 1812," etc.

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN. AND COMPANY

1908

lis

Cofyright, 1903, 3j» Charles Scritturs' Sons ; Copyright, 1907, by Munit &• Co.,

Copyright, 1908, by P. Jf. Collier &• Son ;

Copyright, 1908, by Alfred T. Mahan.

All rights reserved

r

Published, November, 1908

Blectrotyped and Printed Bt
THE COLONIAL PRESS:
CH.Simonds C&Co.,BoBton,U.S.A,

PREFACE

THE somewhat miscellaneous appearance
attaching to the collection of articles herein
republished requires from the author the remark
that he thinks they will be found, by discriminating
readers, to possess in common one characteristic,
which however is probably not so immediately
obvious as to dispense with indication. The
attempt in them has been in all cases to omit
details to the utmost possible, in order that atten-
tion may fasten at once more readily and more
certainly upon general principles. The paper
on Suhordinatton tn Historical Treatment, for
instance, is throughout a plea for consideration
towards general readers, who have not the time
even to read understandingly the mass of detail
-with which historians are prone now to encumber
their narrative. Much less can they work out for
themselves the leading features, the real deter-
minative lines, which become buried under the
accumulation of incidents, like the outlines of an
ancient city hidden under the ruin of its buildings.

vi Preface

As the common proverb has it, the wood often can-
not be seen for the trees.

Few persons, probably, have escaped the de-
spairing sense of inability to find on a map some
particular place, because of the thicket of names
spread over the surface, like the tanglewood of
a forest. Fewer still have been happy enough
to look at a map intelligently constructed for the
special purpose of showing no more than is needed
for the understanding of the subject which the
map is intended to illustrate ; but those who have
had this experience will recognize that the advan-
tage is not only that of finding readily a feature,
the position of which is approximately known, but
also the ease with which can be appreciated the
relations of the several parts to one another, and
to the whole. The composite effect, when thus
obtained for the first time, is illuminative almost
to the point of revelation.

There is, of course, a class of readers to whom
the mastery of details, close knowledge of all in-
cidents, is indispensable; but such fall almost
entirely under the head of students of history, —
or of the particular topic treated, — which is
their life work. Because it is their business,
their specialty, they must, and they can, find time
for minute study; but, in most other subjects
than his own, the specialist is himself a member

Preface vii

of the general public, and therefore he should the
more remember that concerning his specialty
the general public can learn, and wishes to learn,
only those leading features which enable men
to bring the various kinds of knowledge into
correlation with one another, and with their own
individual careers. The matter is one of utility,
and not merely of culture ; for the onward move-
ment of the whole body of mankind — which
we call " the public " — is dependent upon each
man's thorough, consummate knowledge of his
own business, supplemented by an adequate
understanding of the occupations and needs of
his neighbors. That this is profoundly true of
social questions, strictly so-called, will scarcely
be disputed; but in some measure, often in
large measure, all questions are social, because
they affect the common interest of the body politic.
Adequate understanding can be had, if the de-
termining features of the particular subject are
exposed clear of the complication of details
which cling to them, and even in part constitute
them ; the knowledge of which is obligatory upon
the specialist, but to the outsider impedes ac-
quirement. I quote here Sir John Seeley, by
specialty an historian, but who in his Expansion
of England, and Growth of British Policy, gave
to his public outlines of historical periods, rudi-

viii Preface

mentary almost as a skeleton; and thereby en-
abled those not masters of the periods in ques-
tion to see clearly the controlling conditions, like
the single places on a skeleton map, and to appre-
ciate those inter-relations of cause and effect
which correspond to the determining features of
a geographical area. He says: Public under-
standing is necessarily guided by a few large,
plain, simple ideas. When great interests are
plain, and great maxims of government unmis-
takable, public opinion may be able to judge
securely even in questions of vast magnitude.

The present writer is by specialty a naval officer,
who has been led by circumstances to give particu-
lar attention to Naval History and to its illustra-
tions in Naval Warfare. By professional occupa-
tion, and by personal choice, he has been immersed
in the details pertaining to naval life on the ad-
ministrative and military sides. The principal
articles following bear upon matters immediately
connected with these topics; and in them he has
endeavored to follow Seeley's thought, by fasten-
ing attention upon what he conceives to be, or to
have been, the chief and determinative features
in the particular subjects treated. To such treat-
ment the matter of date is indifferent. General
principles endure; and the illustrations of them,
if judiciously selected, are as effective when taken

Preface ix

from one era as from another. Indeed, it may be
claimed that a certain remoteness is desirable,
as contributing to clearness; as one may approach
a building too closely to appreciate its propor-
tions. The activities, prepossessions, and discus-
sions, of a current day constitute in themselves de-
tails, often non-pertinent details, which go to swell
the mass of considerations that obscure perception.
Another remark applicable to military opera-
tions, and probably to active life in general.
While war is waging, much that happens is
unknown, or imperfectly known, outside of a
very restricted number of persons. This ignorance,
whether total or partial, is an element in all con-
temporary appreciation of the operations. Spe-
cifically, one of the conditions which enters into
the decisions of the commander-in-cTiief of either
army is that he commonly must depend upon
imperfect information as to the numbers and
movements of his opponent. This ignorance of
the general is just half that of the outside com-
mentator, whom information fails from both
sides. It may seem to follow that comment should
be postponed; or at all events that, once made, it
should be dismissed as obsolete when clearer light
is obtained. This, however, is not so; for this
imperfect intelligence has been an actual factor
in the operations. To know the manner in which

X Preface

imperfect knowledge, or defective forecast, has
affected action is not only necessary to historical
accuracy, but serves also to illustrate the value of
principles; because a clear eye to principle, a true
appreciation of the controlling features of a mili-
tary situation, will often correct an inference to
which faulty intelligence points, whether the in-
ference be that of the responsible general, or of the
irresponsible critic. These considerations have
justified to the author the reproduction of an article
written during the heat of the War between Japan
and Russia, without serious alteration by subse-
quent knowledge.

Substantial additions have been made to the
articles, Retrospect on the War between Japan
and Russia, and The Significance of the Pacific
Cruise of the American Fleet, in igo8. The reasons
for these, as illustrative of fundamental principles,
it is hoped will appear on perusal. They are be-
lieved to merit the very special attention and sober
consideration of the American people. From the
first of these have been also omitted some con-
cluding paragraphs, treating the question of the
increasing size of battleships; a tendency which
the author has regretted and regrets. Progress in
this direction has become so emphasized among all
naval states since the article was published, that
re-treatment would require a mass of detailed

Preface xi

explanations, foreign to the general purpose of
the collection, as above indicated. A paragraph
in the body of the article sufficiently summarizes
certain general considerations, which can scarcely
fail to assert themselves in an ultimate arrest of
progress.

The author expresses his thanks to the editors
and proprietors of the various periodicals in
which these articles first appeared for their kind
consent to republication. The name of each peri-
odical, and the date of issue, will be found in the
Table of Contents. The dates under each chapter
heading are approximately those of writing; a
matter of no particular consequence in this case,
but retained to conform with other similar works
of the author, where it had some significance.

The author desires also to acknowledge his
indebtedness to Lieutenant-Commander Lloyd H.
Chandler, Aid to Rear-Admiral Robley D. Evans
during the cruise of the Atlantic Fleet to San Fran-
cisco, for the trouble taken in supplying particular
information bearing upon the practical gains to
efficiency from this cruise, which has been the
object of much ill-instructed and invidious
comment.

A. T. Mahan.

JiJy, igo8.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Principles of Naval Administration . . . i

National Review, June, 1903

The United States Navy Department .... 49

Scribner's Magazine, May, 1903

Principles Involved in the War Between Japan and

Russia 87

National Review, September, 1904

Retrospect Upon the War Between Japan and Russia 131

National Review, May, 1906

Objects of the United States Naval War College . 175

An Address at the Annual Opening, August 6, 1888

The Practical Character of the United States

Naval War College 215

An Address at the Annual Opening, September 6, 1892

Subordination in Historical Treatment . . . 243

President's Address at the Annual Meeting of the
American Historical Association, December 26, 1902

The Strength of Nelson 273

National Review, November, 1905

xiv Contents

PAGE

The Value of the Pacific Cruise of the United

States Fleet, 1908 307

Prospect: The Scientific American, December 7, 1907
Retrospect: Collier's Weekly, August 29, 1908

The Monroe Doctrine . 355

National Review, February, 1902

MAP

Outline Map of Seat of War in Manchuria . . 173

THE PRINCIPLES OF NAVAL

ADMINISTRATION, HISTORICALLY

CONSIDERED

American and British Systems Compared

THE NATIONAL REVIEW, JUNE, I9O3

Naval Administration
and Warfare

THE PRINCIPLES OF NAVAL ADMINIS-
TRATION

February, I 903

DEFINITION is proverbially difficult, but the
effort to frame it tends to elicit fulness and
precision of comprehension. What then do we
mean by administration in general, and what are
the several and diverse conceptions that enter
into the particular idea of naval administration ?
Considered generally, administration is, I sup-
pose, an office committed to an individual, or to
a corporate body, by some competent authority,
to the end that it may supply a particular want
felt. At a point in its historical development
a country finds that it needs a navy. To supply
the need it institutes an office. For the special
purpose it vests so much of its own power as
may be necessary in a particular person or
persons, and requires that he, or they, supply to

it a navy. The original grant of powers carries

3

4 Naval Administration and Warfare

the reasonable implication that they will be main-
tained and amplified as occasion requires. That
is the duty of the State to the administration
it has created ; and for that reason the State — '
which in Great Britain and the United States is
ultimately the people — requires to understand
what is involved in the office, for the existence
and working of which it has made itself respon-
sible. It is not, indeed, requisite to follow out all
the minutiae of action, but it is essential to com-
prehend the several great principles which should
receive recognition in the completed scheme;
which of them should govern, and which should
be subordinate in function. If these relations be
properly adjusted, the system is sound and may
be trusted to work itself, provided continuous care
be taken in the choice of persons. The engine
will be good ; but the engineers must be good also.
Naval administration has another side, and
one more commonly familiar. It faces two ways,
towards the nation and towards the service. It
ministers to the country a navy; but in so doing
it embraces numerous functions, and engages in
numerous activities, the object of which is the
navy itself, in the supply of all that is needed for
its healthy existence. It is to these in their en-
tirety that the term naval administration is most
commonly applied. Thus viewed the subject is

Principles of Naval Administration 5

complex and demands a certain amount of analysis;
in order that by the recognition of the leading
needs and principles involved there may be a
clearer understanding of their individual bearings
and relative importance. It will be found here,
as in most practical callings, that efficiency depends
upon a full appreciation of elements which, though
essential, are conflicting in tendency, and upon
due weight being given to each.

Administration being a term of very general
application, it will be expected that that of the
navy should present close analogies, and even
points of identity, with other forms of adminis-
tration; for instance, that in it, as elsewhere,
efficiency of result will be better secured by individ-
ual responsibility than by collective responsibility.
But, along with general resemblance, naval ad-
ministration is very clearly and sharply diflFeren-
tiated by the presence of an element which is
foreign to almost all other activities of life in coun-
tries like Great Britain and the United States.
The military factor is to it not merely incidental,
but fundamental; whatever other result may be
achieved, naval administration has failed unless
it provides to the nation an efficient fighting body,
directed by well-trained men, animated by a strong
military spirit. On the other hand, many of the
operations connected with it diffisr from those

6 Naval Administration and Warfare

common to civil life only in a certain particularity
of method. This is true in principal measure of the
financial management, of the medical establish-
ment, and to a considerable though much smaller
degree of the manufacturing processes connected
with the production of naval material. The busi-
ness routine of even the most military department
of a naval administration is in itself more akin
to civil than to military life: but it by no means
follows that those departments would be better
administered under men of civil habits of thought
than by those of military training. The method
exists for the result, and an efficient fighting body
is not to be attained by weakening the appreciation
of military necessities at the very fountain head
of their supply in the administration. This neces-
sary appreciation can be the result only of personal
experience of good and bad through the formative
period of life.

We find, therefore, at the very outset of our
inquiry two fundamental yet opposing elements,
neither of which can be eliminated. Nor can they
be reconciled, in the sense of becoming sympa-
thetic. In its proper manifestation the jealousy
between the civil and military spirits is a healthy
symptom. They can be made to work together
harmoniously and efficiently; to complement,
not to antagonize each other; provided means

Principles of Naval Administration 7

are taken to ensure to each its due relative prece-
dence and weight in the determination of practical
questions.

Historically, the institution and development
of naval administration has been essentially a civil
process, the object of which has been to provide
and keep in readiness a national weapon for war.
The end is war — fighting ; the instrument is the
navy; the means are the various activities which
we group under the head of administration. Of
these three, the end necessarily conditions the
others. The proverb is familiar, " He who wills
the end wills the means." Whatever is essential
to the spirit and organization of the Navy afloat,
to its efficiency for war, must find itself adequately
represented in the administration, in order that
the exigencies of fighting may be kept well to the
front in governmental and national consideration.
Since armies and navies have existed as perma-
nent national institutions, there has been a con-
stant struggle on the part of the military element
to keep the end — fighting, or readiness to fight —
superior to mere administrative considerations.
This is but natural, for all men tend to magnify
their office. The military man having to do the
fighting, considers that the chief necessity; the
administrator equally naturally tends to think
the smooth running of the machine the most ad-

8 Naval Administration and Warfare

mirable quality. Both are necessary; but the
latter cannot obtain under the high pressure of
war unless in peace the contingency of war has
dictated its system. There is a quaint, well-worn
story, which yet may be new to some readers, of
an administrator who complained that his office
was working admirably until war came and
threw everything out of gear.

The opposition between civil and miUtary,
necessitating their due adjustment, may be said
to be original, of the nature of things. It is born
with naval administration. Corresponding roughly
to these primary factors are the two principal
activities in which administration is exerted —
organization and execution. These also bear
to each other the relation of means to end. Or-
ganization is not for itself, but is a means to an
ultimate executive action; in the case of a navy,
to war or to the prevention of war. It is, therefore,
in its end — war — that organization must find
the conditions dictating its character. Whatever
the system adopted, it must aim above all at per-
fect efficiency in mihtary action; and the nearer
it approaches to this ideal the better it is. It would
seem that this is too obvious for mention. It may
be for mention ; but not for reiteration. The long
record of naval history on the side of administra-
tion shows a constant predominance of other con-

Principles of Naval Administration 9

siderations, and the abiding necessity for insisting,
in season and out of season, that the one test of
naval administration is not the satisfactory or
economical working of the office, as such, but
the readiness of the navy in all points for war.
The one does not exclude the other; but there is
between them the relation of greater and less.

Both organization and execution are properties
alike of the active navy, the instrument for war,
and of the naval administration, the means which
has been constituted to create and maintain
the instrument; but from their respective spheres,
and in proportion to their relative nearness to the
great final end of war, the one or the other char-
acteristic is found predominant. The naval officer
on board his ship, face to face with the difficulties
of the profession, and in daily contact with the grim
implements which remind him of the eventualities
of his calling, naturally sees in organization mainly
a means to an end. Some indeed fall short. The
martinet is a man to whom the organization is
more than a means; but he is the exception.
Naval administration, on the other hand, in the
common acceptation of the term, is mostly office
work. It comes into contact with the Navy proper
chiefly through official correspondence, less by
personal intercourse with the officers concerned;
still less by immediate contact with the daily life of

10 Naval Administration and Warfare

the profession, which it learns at second hand.
It consequently tends to overvalue the orderly
routine and observance of the system by which
it receives information, transmits orders, checks
expenditure, files returns, and, in general, keeps
with the service the touch of paper; in short, the
organization which has been created for facilitating
its own labours. In due measure these are im-
peratively necessary; but it is undeniable that
the practical tendency is to exaggerate their impor-
tance relatively to the executive end proposed.
The writer was once visiting a French captain,
who in the course of the interview took up wearily
a mass of papers from a desk beside him. " I
wonder," said he, " whether all this is as bad with
you as with us. Look at our Navy Register;"
and dividing the pages into two parts, severally
about one-sixth and five-sixths of the whole, he
continued, "This, the smaller, is the Navy; and
that is the Administration." No wonder he had
papers galore; administration needs papers, as a
mill needs grist.

Even in the case of naval officers entering ad-
ministrative offices, the influence of prolonged
tenure is in the same direction. The habits of a
previous lifetime doubtless act as a check, in pro-
portion to the strength they have acquired in the
individual. They serve as an invaluable leaven.

Principles of Naval Administration 11

not only to his own thought but to that of
his associates. Nevertheless, the experience is
general that permanence in an office essentially
civil tends to deaden the intimate appre-
ciation of naval exigencies; yet upon this
alone can thrive that sympathy betvi^een the
administrative and executive functions of the
navy which is requisite to efficiency. The habit
of the arm-chair easily prevails over that of the
quarter-deck; it is more comfortable. For this
reason, in the best considered systems, a frequent
exchange between the civil and military parts of
their profession, between the administrative offices
and the army or fleet, is thought expedient for
officers who show aptitude for the former. It is
better for them personally, better for the adminis-
tration, and consequently better for the service at
large. It prevails extensively in the United States
Navy, where it is frequently the subject of ill-
instructed outside criticism on the score of sea-
officers being on " shore duty." Without asserting
that the exact proportions of service are always
accurately observed, it may be confidently affirmed
that the interchange between the civil and military
occupations tends to facilitate the smooth working
of both, by promoting mutual understanding of
conditions and difficulties.

The subject of this paper is not the navy, al-

12 Naval Administration and Warfare

though that as a military organization has neces-
sarily its own interior administration. What we
have here to consider is an organization essentially
civil, although it has naval men as individual
members and a military body as the subject of its
activities. In the United States the naval adminis-
tration has thus been continuously regarded as a
civil occupation, under the two principal forms
given it since the adoption of the Constitution.
In its origin, in 1798, the Secretary of the Navy
was the sole functionary and a member of the
President's Cabinet. The Board of Naval Com-
missioners, which from 1815 to 1842 was charged
with all the ministerial duties under the Secretary,
was composed of three naval captains ; but when
one of them, Captain Charles Morris, was selected
for a temporary command at sea, he insisted upon
resigning his office of Commissioner, because " I
believed that the exercise of the military duties of
a captain, whilst holding a district commission
of a civil character, would be exceedingly dis-
agreeable to the feeUngs of the officers, even if
legal." When the Board of Naval Commissioners
gave way to the Bureau System which now exists,
the same civil character inhered, and incumbents
of Bureaus were at times taken directly from civil
life. In the British Navy the understanding was
the same concerning the civil nature of duties

Principles of Naval Administration 13

assumed by naval officers unders the organization
which we call Naval Administration. One of the
earliest notable incidents of Nelson's life, when
a young captain, was a flat refusal to obey the
order of an officer much his senior, when holding
the local position of a Dockyard Commissioner
in the civil administration of the Navy. The
administration of the British Navy in this and
cognate matters was then in fact distinctly
styled " civil." It had a large history, char-
acterized through great part of its course by
incessant struggle with the military administra-
tion, either incorporate in the single person of the
Lord High Admiral, or more usually placed in
commission as the Board of Admiralty. The
latter was nominally superior, but commonly
strove in vain to assert its authority against an
interest strongly entrenched in a traditional posi-
tion.

In the United States there never has been such
formal duality of functions as was produced by
the gradual evolution of the British system, which,
like the British Constitution, rather grew than
was framed. The effect in the latter, by the exist-
ence of the two Boards, was to illustrate and inten-
sify an antagonism always sufficiently rooted in
the opposition between civil and military. Thence
resulted practical evils which finally compelled

14 Naval Administration and Warfare

the formal abolition of the Civil Board, and the
transfer of its duties to the Board of Admiralty,
suitably reinforced for that purpose by a number of
subordinate technical experts, not members of the
Board, and no longer so associated together as to
hold the power of concerted action which attaches
to an organic group. There was thus restored, or it
should rather be said established, the unity essen-
tial to all military administration; the unity in
this case of a single, regularly constituted Board.
From this, however, the logic of facts has gradu-
ally evolved the accepted principle of a supreme in-
dividual responsibility, that of the First Lord, who
is a member of the Government. He is responsible
for all the business of the Admiralty; while each
of the other members has his separate functions,
for the discharge of which he is responsible to the
First Lord, although, as we are informed by a
recent high authority, " this responsibility is not
easy to define."

In Great Britain, therefore, as in the United
States, one man is now ultimately responsible;
the Secretary of the Navy in the one State, the
First Lord in the other. The difference between
the two systems is that the United States Secretary,
belonging to no Board, has to deal with subordi-
nates only, not with associates. The First Lord,
as member of the Board, -which assembles fre-

Principles of Naval Administration 15

quently, necessarily meets his assistants not merely
singly, but together ; thus undergoing an influence
much weightier and more complex than that of
consulting at convenience single men, each of
whom appears before him strong only in his
natural strength of character, modified by the
military habit of submission. We are told of Sir
Robert Walpole that he avoided as much as
possible calling Cabinet councils, lest they should
furnish the elements of an opposition. The First
Lord doubtless may absent himself from the
meetings of the Board, if he will, but the spirit of
the system would in that case be violated. Like the
American Secretary of the Navy, he is, by custom
now almost invariable, a civilian. Regarding the
expert professional members of the naval admin-
istration as subordinate, as they properly are in
both systems, it is evident that the British tends
to a greater influence of the military element.
It is, however, influence, not authority; two
powers of very different natures. There appears
to be in practice considerable indeterminateness
as to the executive functions of the Admiralty
Board as a body, an absence of definition charac-
teristically English; but the single ultimate re-
sponsibility of the First Lord necessarily carries
with it single uncontrolled authority. Without
that it is idle to speak of responsibility.

16 Naval Administration and War jar e

In main outline, both systems consist of a single
responsible civil head with a number of professional
subordinates, among whom are apportioned the
several executive duties of the naval administra-
tion. The British provides in addition, by dis-
tinct implication and by usual practice, a con-
sultative body, which does not exist in the Ameri-
can. Although it is, of course, open to any Ameri-
can Secretary to call such into being for his own
assistance, its opinions would not give him, being
its creator, the moral support, nor exert over him
the influence, that inheres in one established by
statute. This diflPerence tends to emphasize the
single responsibility of the United States Secretary
of the Navy, and probably has the result of pro-
ducing in him a greater sense of accountability.
He has no associates; the British First Lord has.
It is interesting to note that each method repro-
duces the specific political genius of the nation.
In the United States the executive power of the
general government rests explicitly in one man;
so also that of the Navy Department. In Great
Britain the executive government rests in a Com-
mittee of Parliament, of whom one is Prime
Minister; the administration of the navy is also
technically " in commission," whatever may be
the practical outcome as to responsibility.

There is yet another result of the Board system

Principles of Naval Administration 17

as compared with ours, in that an officer of experi-
ence writing about it can say, " There is no real
separation of the duties of the Lords of the Ad-
miralty; they are not heads of departments rigidly
defined; the operations they superintend are
closely inter-related." " The happy constitution
of the Board enables it to handle a mass of business
now grown to vast complexity, without splitting
it up into over-specialized departments, presided
over by independent chiefs with duties and offices
sharply and precisely defined." The contrast here
is pronounced ; for while the duties of the bureau-
chiefs, who are the professional subordinates of
the American civil head of department, are neces-
sarily closely inter-related, because concerning the
same common profession, they are nevertheless
sharply defined, and their chiefs mutually inde-
pendent. This condition emphasizes their indi-
vidual responsibility; but it also fosters a separate-
ness of interest and of action which by some
officers in the United States Navy has been con-
sidered to be a fruitful cause of bad adminis-
tration. The unifying force is not the consultation
and interaction of a Board, but the authority of
a single head; and he, being frequently inexpert
in naval practical life, is not always best fitted to
comprehend the relative value of technical or
military points, or to adjust to the best advantage

18 Naval Administration and Warfare

of the service the conflicting demands which the
bureau-chiefs represent.

We are here in presence of a great difiiculty or
naval administration; vs^hich is, to attain and pre-
serve substantial unity of executive action, while
at the same time providing for the distribution
among several individuals of a mass of detailed
duties, beyond the power of one man to discharge.
This need of unity applies not only to high con-
siderations of poUcy, or a few larger questions of
administration. It enters into every dockyard,
and above all into every component unit of the
fleet. In the United States seven bureaus have
a part and a claim in every ship that is planned.
When it is remembered that the necessarily con-
tracted capacity of a ship of war has made the
disposition of space in every period a difficult
problem, it will be understood that in our day,
of complicated construction and armament, we
have in the various bureau demands the elements
of a conflict that may aptly be called intestine.
To this must be added, qualifying and, to some
extent, contesting the whole result, the military
requirements of the navy outside of the admin-
istration, which has the combatant duties pressing
upon its attention. Nautical quahties, armament
and armour, speed, coal capacity, provisions and
stores, accommodation of crew, sanitary provision,

Principles of Naval Administration 19

all these, with many details attendant on each,
have their special representative in the central
general administration. Beyond these, but not
specifically represented there, is the military body,
\vhich demands, or should demand, observance
of the pre-eminent consideration that the ship
should be in all respects fitted for the special
function she is to fulfil in a fleet; that cruisers, for
instance, should not only be fast, but in all things
contrived for celerity in their actions; that battle-
ships, being meant to act together, should not only
be individually good, but essentially homogeneous,
especially in tactical qualities. In the report of one
of the early American Secretaries it was noted,
as being to the grave discredit of the Civil Admin-
istration of the British Navy, that the existence of
" numerous distinct classes of the same rate, as
well in their hulls as in masts, sails, and equip-
ment, anJ tn a still greater degree in their qualities
for combined action, demonstrates the prevalence
of caprice and prejudice, instead of science and
system." Even the interchange of parts and of
stores, between vessels of the same class, upon
which he further comments, though perhaps less
important to-day, is a consideration not out of
date.

Over all hovers, not unhealthfully, the consider-
ation of expense. A very high official in a navy

20 Naval Administration and Warfare

which entrusts to a naval officer the final decisions
as to the assemblage of qualities said once to me :
" With practically unlimited money, such as your
lucky nation can give, one may go to extremes
in experiments; but limited as vs^e are in means,
and with large establishments, it is necessary to
digest ideas, to compromise on size, and to settle
on a type." In the support thus given to unity of
design, in ensuring a just predominance to military
considerations, considerations that think first of
the day of battle, of the months of campaign,
of the services of the scout, of the evolutions of
the fleet, of the need for numbers as well as for
individual size, it can be seen that the pressure
of economy may be an invaluable ally.

The two great oppositions inherent in naval
administration — civil versus military, unity of
action against multiplicity of activities — are but
a reflection of the essential problem of warfare.
A saying has been attributed by Thiers to the
great Napoleon, that the difficulty of the Art of
War consists in concentrating in order to fight, and
disseminating in order to subsist. There is no
other, he said, aphoristically. The problem is one
of embracing opposites. That we have here on
the one hand unity of action, and on the other
diff"usion of activities, in the harmonious combina-
tion of which the problem of war consists, is

Principles of Naval Administration 21

probably plain enough; but it may be less obvious
how the civil element enters where all is apparently
military. Nevertheless it is there in full adminis-
trative force. The army concentrated to fight is
the army unified in the final action for which it
exists; the military element in full vigour and
predominance, the question of subsistence reduced
for the moment to the barest minimum, yet not
even so wholly discarded. The army disseminated
to subsist is a force for which unity of action is
temporarily subordinated to the exigency that so
many men cannot live on the resources of a narrow
district, in which it camps or through which it
marches, nor conveniently receive even its own
daily supplies from a single centre. Given over
now chiefly to subsisting, against the next call
for action, the administrative bodies, civil in func-
tion if military in rank, assume the predominant
role. Nevertheless, even here military necessity
exercises the prior control ; for the position of the
several corps, if stationary, or the lines of march
of the several columns, if in movement, must be
so disposed that concentration may be effected
with a rapidity which shall defy an enemy's at-
tempt to strike any division in detail. This mili-
tary requirement, though latent, subjects to itself
the whole administrative regulation, whatever the
inconvenience.

22 Naval Administration and War jar e

In operations of actual war the predominance
of the miUtary end in view is easily maintained,
and is personified in the officer in chief command.
The principle is settled that in the field all purely
administrative bodies, commonly called staflF" corps,
are under his orders. It is less easy in peace to
ensure the due balance between the end and the
means; between the action, and the activities
which underlie action. Administration then be-
comes the bigger and more imposing activity,
with an increasing tendency to exist for itself
rather than for the military purposes which are
its sole reason for existence. One of the greatest
military administrators afloat that the British
Navy has ever known was Admiral the Earl of
St. Vincent. Yet, when peace supervened during
his tenure of office as First Lord, preoccupation
with economies of administration so prevailed with
him that, when war broke out again, the material
of the Navy in ships and stores was so deteriorated
and exhausted as to impair dangerously the effi-
ciency of the fleets. It is not that the head has
ceased to be military, for in war as in peace the
military as well as the administrative head of
the navy may be a civil official, as he now is in
Great Britain and the United States; but warlike
action having ended, the importance of keeping
military necessities predominant is gradually sub-

Principles of Naval Administration 23

jected to other considerations. Yet in that pre-
dominance, in whatever way assured, is to be
found the unifying principle of a military ad-
ministration. In the due relation and subordi-
nation of the two ideas, military and civil, unity
of action with distribution of activities too copious
for one man's discharge, consists the problem
of military and of naval administration. It
involves execution, concerning which it is a com-
monplace to say that in its greatest efficiency
it is the function of one solely responsible; and
it involves also organization, which by its very
name implies multiplicity, for organization is an
assemblage of organs among which functions are
apportioned.

As usual, history sheds an illuminative ray on
this subject by its narrative of progress. Where
a naval administrative system is the result of a
natural evolution, it will usually be found to begin
on a small scale, in the hands of a single person.
It has then but one organ, however many the
functions. As it progresses in scope and number
of activities, its functions differentiate more and
more and it is led to evolve organs. In the process
the two ideas which we have noted will be found
not only to exist, but to conflict perpetually. The
subordinate functions embodied in the problem
of maintenance, however distributed, tend ever

24 Naval Administration and Warfare

to assert their independence of one another and
of the end for which they severally and collect-
ively exist. The complaint of this tendency
is a part of naval history, and finds its natural
voice in the military sea-going body, because that
is the chief sufferer.

The naval administration of Great Britain,
originating in a political organization of much
lower type than now obtains, and so continuing
for centuries, affords the best example of a purely
natural evolution, controlled by circumstances,
the successive steps of which can be very briefly
told. Collated with that of the United States,
the contrast illustrates by comparison. In the
reign of John is first found a single official, called
the Clerk of the Ships. He had from time to
time subordinates; but as a matter of organiza-
tion he stood alone, charged with all the duties
connected with the maintenance of the king's
ships. The navy, so far as it existed independ-
ently of a temporary assemblage of merchant
vessels for a particular purpose, was then re-
garded less as national than as the personal prop-
erty of the sovereign. This very rudimentary
civil administration lasted to the days of Henry
Vin., who throughout his life interested himself
directly m the development of naval material;
partly from political recognition of the value and

Principles of Naval Administration 25

scope of a navy for England, partly through
personal bent. Mr. Oppenheim, the most search-
ing investigator in this field, writes : " For
almost thirty-eight years, nearly every year
marked some advance in construction or ad-
ministration, some plan calculated to make the
navy a more effective fighting instrument."
This close association would naturally make the
ruler aware when the existing administrative sys-
tem had become inadequate to the extension it
had received. Hence, in the last year of his
reign, Henry constituted a board of five officers,
civil functionaries, among whom were distributed
the various administrative duties. To this, with
considerable interruptions under the first Stuarts
and the Commonwealth, the care and develop-
ment of the material of the navy was intrusted
for nearly three centuries. The members were
known as the Principal OflScers, and later as the
Navy Board, their work being done under the
superintendence of the sovereign, directly or
through a minister. The head of the navy as a
military force was the Lord High Admiral; but
in early days that officer was not necessarily expert
in naval material, not necessarily a seaman at all,
nor the office itself continuous. He was there-
fore entirely at a disadvantage in maintaining his
side of any technical contention.

26 Naval Administration and Warfare

This condition lasted till the Restoration, when
the Duke of York, afterwards James II., became
Lord High Admiral. He was a seaman of good
administrative ability, and with the personal
prestige of royal blood. He revived the Navy
Board under his own control. When deprived
of his position, because a Roman Catholic, the
office of Lord High Admiral was placed in com-
mission; an Admiralty Board, mihtary in char-
acter, succeeded to the authority which the Duke
had established. From this time there were the
two Boards, the Admiralty and the Navy, the
military and the civil. The former was nominally
superior; but the latter, which comprised sub-
stantially all that we call naval administration,
being older and well established, succeeded in
maintaining a position which has been character-
ized as of more than semi-independence. The
result was a divided control, and antagonism
between the two which represented respectively
the civil and military functions; nor was this
lessened by the fact that members of the Navy
Board were not infrequently sea officers, who thus
passed into a civil occupation, practically abandon-
ing their former profession. The fault inhered
in the system.

Divided control means divided responsibility;
and that in turn means no responsibility, or at

Principles of Naval Administration 27

least one very hard to fix. The abuses that grew
up, especially in the dockyards, the effect of
which of course was transmitted to the navy
that depended upon them, led to a loud outcry
throughout the service towards the end of the
eighteenth century; but horses are not swapped
when crossing streams, and the exigencies of the
great wars which ended in 1815 made it long
impossible to attempt the revolutionary change
needed. This was carried out in 1832 by the
Government which came in with the Reform Bill
of 1830. The spirit of the innovation was sum-
marized in the expression, " Individual (undi-
vided) Responsibility." The Navy Board dis-
appeared altogether. The civil functions which
in the process of centuries had accumulated in
its hands, and had culminated by successive
additions into a very numerous and loose aggre-
gation of officials, were concentrated into five
heads, having separate and independent respon-
sibilities; in this resembling the Chiefs of Bureau
in the United States Naval Administration. Each
of the five was specifically under one of the mem-
bers of the Admiralty Board, who thus represented
that particular interest of the Navy in the Board
regarded as a consultative body. Admiral Sir
Vesey Hamilton writes : " This was a consolida-
tion of functions and a subordination of the civil

28 Naval Administration and Warfare

branches to the Admiralty as a whole . . . under
the Board of Admiralty collectively and under
the Lords individually." While the First Lord
is a civilian, the majority of the other members
of the Admiralty are naval officers. Authority,
therefore, is in civil hands, while military influence
enters strongly.

While I highly appreciate the value of this
latter factor, particularly as the sea lords do not
consequently give up their profession, but remain
actively connected with it, it appears to my ob-
servation of human nature that the system has
some of the disadvantages of a council of war, tend-
ing to make responsibility elusive. I question, in
short, the entire soundness of a scheme which by
its nature, if not by specific provision, inclines
to place executive action in the hands of a con-
sultative body. It seems to sap individual re-
sponsibility; not perhaps in subordinates, but,
what is much worse, in the head, in the com-
mander-in-chief of the administration, upon whom
depend the great determinative lines of provi-
sion and of policy. In conception, the Admiralty
is primarily a Board, secondarily individual
members. For individual responsibility at the
head, too much depends upon the personality
of the First Lord, too little upon his position.
Since these lines were first written, five years ago,

Principles of Naval Administration 29

it may fairly be inferred, from the language of the
English Press, that very decisive changes of policy
have been adopted which are attributed popularly,
and even professionally, to the dominating influ-
ence of one of the " Sea " Lords. During a brief
period in 1827, ^^ ^^° centuries before, an arrange-
ment more formally ideal obtained. The Duke
of Clarence, afterwards William IV., being ap-
pointed Lord High Admiral, the Admiralty Board
lapsed as a board and became his council. The
modification here made in deference to royal
blood might well serve as a model for naval ad-
ministration; a head with advisers feels respon-
sibility more than a head with associates. It should
go without saying that in any case the head must
be good.

In the United States Naval Administration the
head is one man, with no division of responsibility.
His own superior, the President, may control
his action, as may Congress by law; but this, as
far as it goes, is simply a transfer of responsibihty
in its entirety. It is not a division. The Secretary
of the Navy has no associates, but he has sub-
ordinates. In them he has capable advisers, so
far as he chooses to use them ; but he can transfer
to them no responsibility, except that of doing as
he tells them. The responsibility of decision is
his alone. The law constitutes them subordinate

30 Naval Administration and War jar e

executive officers, just as it constitutes a lieutenant
in the navy; but it does not constitute them ad-
visers, and there is in their position nothing which
compels the Secretary to hear their advice, still
less to accept it. Each is independent of the
others, and there is nothing in law to compel
conference between them. The Secretary may
assemble them, or any number of them, as a board
for consultation, in his presence or otherwise;
but there is nothing in the system which obliges
him to do so. Unity of action between several
naval technical experts, each of whom is repre-
sented in the planning and maintenance of every
naval vessel, and some in every element of naval
military efficiency, depends entirely upon the
co-ordinating force of the Secretary, who is a
civilian, possibly with only more or less outside
knowledge of the subject. The system provides
no strictly professional unifying force, such as
the Board of Admiralty, which has a numerical
preponderance of combatant sea-officers, each
of whom has in individual control one or more
of the technical administrative departments, and
may be supposed therefore to be fully informed
of its arguments in any technical matter under
discussion. The constitution of the Admiralty
Board also ensures that all technical details and
their effect upon naval efficiency shall be scruti-

Principles of Naval Administration 31

nized from the point of view of the men who shall
do the work of war. The American plan fixes
the very strictest individual responsibility in the
Secretary, and in his principal subordinates, the
chiefs of bureau. His duties are universal and
supreme, theirs sharply defined and mutually
independent. This result appears to me superior
to the British, but it has the defects of its qualities;
not too much independence in responsibility, but,
so far as the system goes, too little co-ordination.
As I said of the responsibility of the First Lord,
unity of action depends too much on the person-
ahty of the Secretary.

The naval administration of the United States
has also a history; one less of evolution than of
successive methods, compressed within a very
few years. The evolution has been simply a
progressive experience, with results formulated
in ordinances. The navy of the War of Inde-
pendence disappeared entirely, and with it the
several systems upon which Congress had at-
tempted to administer it. In the first organiza-
tion of the new Government, no provision was
made for a navy. When the truce between Portu-
gal and Algiers in 1793 took from American ship-
ping in the Mediterranean the incidental protec-
tion of the Portuguese navy, it was resolved to
build six frigates; but as this was to be only a

32 Naval Administration and Warfare

temporary force, not to be continued in case a
peaceful arrangement with the piratical community
could be made, the administrative care of the
vessels was attached to the War Department.
It was not until the oppression of the French
Revolutionary Government upon neutral com-
merce culminated in the decree of January, 1798,
making any neutral vessel lawful prize if it had on
board a single article of English origin, that the
United States determined to have a navy. On
April 27, 1798, Congress authorized the President
to build, or to obtain, twelve vessels of a force
not exceeding twenty-two guns each; and on
April 30 the office of Secretary of the Navy
was established by law. The first Secretary
entered on his duties the following June. Until
the close of the War of 18 12, the Secretary in person,
like the Clerk of the Ships, was the naval admin-
istration. He no doubt had assistants and ob-
tained assistance, technical and military, from
experts of both classes; but function had not yet
differentiated into organization, and he not only
was responsible, but had to give personal attention
to various and trivial details of most diverse char-
acter, which overburdened him by their mass, and
prevented concentration of attention upon the really
great matters of his office. A difficulty such as this
of course reached its height under the pressure

Principles of Naval Administration 33

of war, and led to the first statutory expansion
of the system. The duties of the Secretary, as a
later incumbent of the office wrote, arrange them-
selves under two distinct heads. First in impor-
tance are those connected with the more compre-
hensive interests of the State, the general policy
of the navy involved in the increase of the fleet,
its employment and distribution when created.
Subordinate to these are the functions connected
with the construction, equipment, and mainte-
nance of naval force; the designing, building,
arming, and manning of ships. These latter are
strictly technical; but the poHcy is not. It there-
fore may be adequately grasped by a person with-
out antecedent professional requirements, which
the Secretary often must be.

In this analysis it is easy to recognize the dual
functions of the British Admiralty and Navy
Board before consolidation. It is correct as far
as it goes, and was sufficiently comprehensive
for the time, 1842, when it was written. The
naval seaman then might, and very shortly before
did, receive the ship from the builder a bare shell;
he was expected to be able to mast her, rig her,
stow her, mount her guns, bend her sails, as well
as to take her to sea, handle her, and fight her.
The military and technical parts of the profession
were so closely entwined in the same men that to

34 Naval Administration and Warfare

suggest a distinction between them, however real,
would have seemed superfluous. Even in those
days of very simple construction and armament,
however, the evil effects of valuing the technical
above the military was anticipated by some.
" Keep them at sea," said Lord St. Vincent, " and
they cannot help being seamen ; but care must be
taken to ensure efficiency at the guns." In 1812
neglect of this wise maxim showed its results to
the British. Since 1842 the immense technical
advances in all matters connected with naval
construction, propulsion, and armament have
tended, by their exaltation of the technical con-
tribution to naval power, to depreciate in popular
recognition the element of military efficiency.
Yet, so long as navies remain they will exist
for fighting; the military considerations being the
end, they must necessarily continue supreme.
Naval administration, to be successful, must in
its constitution reflect this condition. A necessary
antecedent to doing so is the intellectual apprecia-
tion of the relation of civil to military in a service
essentially military; and not merely in the internal
politics of a nation. Upon this must follow
formal provision for the due representation of
both in the system. This is doubly requisite,
because administration, being essentially civil in

Principles of Naval Administration 35

function, will not of itself evolve military energy.
This must be injected by design.

The American naval captains of 1 8 15 had shown
themselves thorough masters in practice of all
sides of their profession, technical and military.
They had learned in experience the essential
underlying principles affecting the nautical quali-
ties of ships, as distinguished from the mechanical
processes of putting them together by the ship
builder. They, therefore, were fitted to oversee
the part of administration " connected with the
construction of naval force," as well as the " equip-
ment and maintenance." To entrust this duty
to one of them, or to a board of several, was a
recourse so natural that in 1801 it had been
recommended by the first Secretary, after two years
incumbency. " The business of the Navy De-
partment embraces too many objects for the
superintendence of one person. The public in-
terest has suffered. The estabUshment of a board
of three or five experienced navy officers to super-
intend such parts of the duties as nautical men are
best qualified to understand would be a saving
to the public." Such a board, by the authority
that attaches to a constituted organ as distinct
from the purely personal, unorganized, and un-
authorized efforts of single officers, might have
saved the country from the gigantic administrative

36 Naval Administration and Warfare

mistake, essentially military in its effects on effi-
ciency, of building gunboats to the exclusion of
seagoing ships ; locking up in a body of two hun-
dred vessels, impotent, singly and collectively,
officers and men sufficient, by a later Secretary's
report, to man thirteen ships-of-the-line.

The recommendation of 1801 fell fruitless.
There followed eight years of a President who
held navies in abhorrence, as at the best barely
tolerable evils. The War of 1812, with the vastly
increased burden laid upon the Secretary, em-
phasized the necessity of relief. By an Act of
February 7, 18 15, there was constituted a Board
of Navy Commissioners, placed explicitly under
the superintendence of the Secretary; to act as
his agent, or, to use the terms of the Act, " to
discharge all the ministerial duties " of his office,
to which further it was expressly " attached."
Subordination could scarcely be more distinctly
affirmed. Its composition was purely military,
three sea-officers of the rank of captain, then the
highest in the Navy; but its duties were civil in
character, and to define them the Act quoted
verbatim the terms of the law of 1798, which
created the Secretary's own position : " All matters
connected with the naval establishment of the
United States." The " establishment " is the
entire organization of the navy, dockyards and

Principles of Naval Administration 37

ships, material and personnel, from inception
to completion, considered apart from its active
use for national policy. The use of this com-
pleted instrument is a military attribute, and
is, of course, in the hands of the constitu-
tional Commander-in-Chief, the President, who
may exercise his office through the Secretary
or such other person as he selects.

There was much good in this plan. It preserved
the single accountabihty of the Secretary, provided
him with the responsible assistance of a compe-
tent board of experts, and secured due influence
to military considerations in a quarter where
they tend to disappear. The grave defect was that
the Board's responsibility was collective, not
individual; and its action in all matters was
joint, not several. There was no division of execu-
tive functions. Everything done was the act of
all. It needs but little experience of life to know
that under such circumstances decision is inevi-
tably slow, that action shares the defect, and that
the more positive and the firmer the individual
members in their convictions, the more dilatory
the machine, by the protraction of discussion.
Ordinarily, in practice, some corrective is found
in the disposition of one or more of any three
to submit to the stronger character of another;
and one or two will take the most of the work for

38 Naval Administration and Warfare

the sake of exercising all the power. But such a
result neither removes the evil of a joint responsi-
bility, nor attains the beneficial result of dividing
the administrative labor. Responsibility, which
should be single, was divided among three; and
activities beyond the ability of one, instead of
being apportioned, remained the charge of all,
and therefore of each.

Thus examined, the legislation of 1815 is seen
to signalize the second step in the process of
evolution, which it would seem must characterize
the process of a military administration that
springs from and follows the natural development
of national wants. First the one man, the agent of
the government; the seed in which, for the time,
are embraced all the potential administrative
functions. These in last analysis are reduced to
two — the civil and miUtary; all purely technical
work falling under the former head. As the office
grows, and outstrips the knowledge and power
of one man, the next step is to provide him a body
of assistants to take upon them severally and col-
lectively the distinctively technical work, which
the actual incumbent, either through ignorance
or pressure of occupation, is unable to discharge.
The Principal Officers of Henry VIII. represent
the same stage as the Navy Commissioners of the
United States.

Principles of Naval Administration 39

This first differentiation brings out at once
the fact that, whatever the personal status of the
chief, whether civil or military, his office is essen-
tially military; for in the distribution of functions
there is necessarily reserved to his immediate care
just those which are essentially military : the direc-
tion of the navy, when created. All that relates
to the establishment, to the creation and mainte-
nance of the fleet and dockyards, is the particular
charge of the technical assistants; and this is essen-
tially a civil function, even though the officers
entrusted with it be military men. This is the
essence of the step taken by Henry VIII., when
he called into being the Principal Officers, who
became the Navy Board. In the then compara-
tively simple organization of the state, the sover-
eign, who was the actual principal and head of
the office, instituted in the place of a single inexpert
official a body of technical expert agents, answer-
able to himself in person, or to his representative.
In the military direction they had no share; it
remained in his hands, to be exercised directly
or by such person as he might designate. Quite
unconsciously, in both the British and American
navies, by the simple logic of facts and felt neces-
sities, and not as a result of previous analysis, the
first expansion comes by aiding the head of the
navy in the technical cares of the establishment.

40 Naval Administration and Warfare

and leaving to him in their entirety the military
attributes of the service. Although the American
Secretary is by personal status a civilian, and
retains full supervisory control of all technical
matters, his immediate duties are comprehen-
sively mihtary. They have so remained since
the first expansion of his administrative staff.

The tree of naval administration in the United
States had thus begun to grow. It had put forth
a stem in which were latent the branches that
were yet to be. The merits and defects of the
scheme have been indicated. The lapse of time
emphasized shortcomings, and gave rise to com-
plaints which increased yearly in volume. The
Secretary, however, could maintain a judicial
attitude towards the whole controversy, because
it involved simply the best means of giving him
the technical assistance needed. His official
supremacy had been preserved, and was not
threatened. In the discussion preceding the Act
of 1 8 15, the suggestion that he should be, ex-
officio, the president of his board of technical
experts, had been advanced by Commodore
Decatur, whose distinguished name was supported
in this by the equally strong ones of Perry, War-
rington, and David Porter. The proposition was
renewed in Congress in 1820, but the committee
to whom it was referred placed the matter sue-

Principles of Naval Administration 41

cinctly on the proper basis. " If the Secretary
were a constituted part of the Board," a member
among other members, " and at the same time
possessed the control and superintendence of its
proceedings, the commissioners would be little
more than advisory, and in that proportion bereft
of responsibility." If, on the contrary, he was
simply a presiding officer, with a casting vote, " the
benefit derived from the superintendence of one
officer over others, under distinct responsibilities,
would be entirely lost."

The corporate direct responsibility of the Board,
under and to the Secretary, had been thus by
statute preserved distinct and unimpaired. Later
secretaries were therefore able to discuss the ques-
tion of modification without sense of personal
jealousy, as distinguished from official interest;
and the change which constituted the next stage
of development was recommended on the ground
of well-proved faults in the system, not in individ-
uals. " Not only has there been defect of individ-
ual responsibility to the public, but a vast accumu-
lation of labor; since each member, being an-
swerable alike for the action of the whole, became
equally involved in an obligation to take personal
cognizance of everything that was done. Under
these circumstances it has been impossible to go
through the great and increasing mass of business

42 Naval Administration and Warfare

which inevitably devolved upon them with the
decision and promptitude required." As the
nation grew the naval administration had ex-
panded; and inherent errors of system, tolerable
on a small scale, became unendurable on a large.

Mr. Paulding, the Secretary, whose words
written in 1839 have just been quoted, recom-
mended the adoption of measures to ensure in-
dividual responsibility, which, it will be recalled,
was the watchword of the corresponding change
of system in the British administration in 1832.
He emphasized also the need of a division of
labor, " a classification and distribution of
duties," which likewise was a distinct, though not
the dominant, note of the British reformation. In
this third stage of evolution there continues in the
two nations the parallelism of cause and eflFect
noted in the second. The action of each, however,
was modified by its constitutional tradition, and
the American was more radical than the British.
The board system disappeared altogether, giving
place to that of bureaus, mutually independent.
No statutory provision for their co-operation
exists, except in the supreme control of the Secre-
tary. The essence of the new system was the
constitution, under a single head, of several dis-
tinct agents, with duties sharply defined, and with
individual responsibility. Among these was to

Principles of Naval Administration 43

be divided a mass of work, hitherto in charge
of a single body, which both in executive action
and in responsibility had been collective, not in-
dividual.

The details of this system, which still obtains,
are relatively unimportant; but a brief statement
of their historical development throws light upon
the general problem of naval administration.
Mr. Paulding recommended three bureaus, cor-
responding in number to the former commission-
ers. To one he assigned the construction, equip-
ment, and maintenance of ships of war; to the
second the maintenance and development of
navy yards, hospitals, magazines, etc.; to the
third the purchase, manufacture, and supply of
stores of all kinds to the navy. These will be
seen to correspond to (i) the naval establishment
afloat, (2) to that ashore, and (3) to the furnishing
of supplies for both. Over each of the first two he
placed a sea-officer, with one technical subordin-
ate; this assistant to the first to be a naval con-
structor, to the second a civil engineer. For the
third bureau there was to be a " chief," — a
term evidently chosen to admit a civilian, — and
under him three technical subordinates, viz. : a
naval captain as inspector of ordnance, a naval
captain as hydrographer, and a surgeon to super-
intend the provision of medical stores. This

44 Naval Administration and Warfare

difFerentiadon of the duties of the Board into
three branches represents a minimum of change;
while the association of technical subordinates
to each of the three heads so much resembles the
British Admiralty scheme of 1832 as to suggest ir-
resistibly that the Secretary had had this under
consideration; as he very properly might. His
successor, however, thought that the duties thus
distributed would be too much for the several
bureaus; and of course individual responsibility,
though expressed by statute, ceases to be actual
when the load imposed is more than one man
can bear.

This raises again the question, irrepressible
because one of proportion, between unity of action
and a distribution of activities, framed to ensure
individual responsibility. The more numerous
the bureaus, the more numerous the discordant
wills and interests that must be made to act to-
gether; but if they be too few, and their several
charges too weighty, there results for the chiefs,
as for the Secretary before 1815, the necessity
of devolving work on non-responsible subordinates.
Responsibility lapses. The present (1903) Con-
gress has had to review the same line of thought,
with reference to the proposition of a recent Secre-
tary to consolidate three of the bureaus now exist-
ing. Consolidation would tend to bring their

Principles of Naval Administration 45

several activities into harmony; but on the other
hand there is the question whether the whole
might not be too much for one man's reasonable
responsibility. It is to be remembered that the
responsibility of a bureau chief is more precise,
more detailed and immediate, than the general
responsibility of the Secretary, just because the
field allotted to him is restricted. There is the
further question, more urgent in public than in
private business, as to the amount of power in-
volving expenditure to be left in a single hand.
After discussion. Congress in 1842 established five
bureaus, and in 1862, under the pressure of the
War of Secession, increased them to eight, the num-
ber which now exists. The history of the consider-
ations which governed this further development,
though instructive and useful, is not essential.
When first instituted, it was stated specifically
that the bureaus were not intended to perform any
more or different duties than those heretofore
entrusted to the Board of Commissioners. As
the functions of the latter had been defined, in
1815, in words taken from the Act of 1798, con-
stituting the ofiice of Secretary of the Navy,
continuity of legislation was preserved through-
out; above all in the important matter of not
impairing the sole control of the Secretary. The
aim was simply to facilitate business by a division

46 Naval Administration and Warfare

of labor, ensuring at the same time personal
responsibility everywhere.

It is to the spirit, and the underlying principles,
that I have thought it instructive to direct atten-
tion, rather than to the details of their application,
in the subdivision of administrative work. It
has been wisely observed by Sir John Seeley that
" public understanding is necessarily guided by a
few large, plain, simple ideas. When great inter-
ests are plain, and great maxims of government
unmistakable, public opinion may be able to judge
securely even in questions of vast magnitude."
The United States system of naval administration
has progressed successively, and without breach
of legislative continuity, from the simple rudi-
mentary organ, the one man, in whom all func-
tions as well as all responsibility were centred,
through the phase of a complex organ with aggre-
gate functions and responsibilities, defined, but
still undifferentiated, into an organization elabo-
rate in form, if not final in development. The
process has been from first to last consistent in
principle. The sole control and single responsi-
bility of the Secretary — the representative of the
President — have been preserved throughout, and
all other responsibility is, and has been, not only
subordmate to him but derivative from him, as a
branch derives its being from the root. Moreover,

Principles of Naval Administration 47

consistency has also been maintained in restrict-
ing the administration thus evolved to the civil
function which it essentially is. From the first
departure, in the institution of the Board of Com-
missioners, to the present time, it has not had
mihtary authority properly so called. It has had
necessary authority in matters pertaining to a
military establishment, but it has had no direction
of activities in themselves essentially military;
that has remained with the Secretary, and is by
him transferred only to officers properly military
in function. Finally, the principle of particular
responsibility has been strictly followed. Within
the limits of the duty assigned, the corporate
responsibility of the Board in its day was, and the
individual responsibility of each bureau chief now
is, as certain and defined as that of the Secretary.
The defect of the system is that no means is
provided for co-ordinating the action of the bu-
reaus, except the single authority of the Secretary.
This, in his beginning days of inexperience, to-
gether with his preoccupations with the numerous
collateral engagements attendant upon all posi-
tions of public responsibility, will most usually
be inadequate to the task. To indicate a defect
is not to prescribe a remedy; and the purpose
of this article is to show things as they are, not to
advocate particular changes. One of the ablest

48 Naval Administration and Warfare

administrative sea-ofEcers, both afloat and ashore,
that I have known in my professional career,
stated before a Congressional committee that he
had " always believed it would be wise to have a
board of five officers for the purpose of harmoniz-
ing difficulties between bureaus, setthng upon
a ship-building policy, and other matters that
embarrass the head of the Department on account
of a lack of professional knowledge." I do not
undertake to pass an opinion upon this particular
suggestion, but confine myself to remarking that
the fault in the system certainly exists, and that
any remedy requires the careful observance of two
points: i, that the adviser, one or a board, be
wholly clear of administrative activity; and, 2,
that he or they be advisers only, pure and simple,
with no power to affect the individual responsibility
of decision. This must be preserved under what-
ever method, as the Secretary's privilege as well
as his obligation.

THE UNITED STATES NAVY
DEPARTMENT

THE UNITED STATES NAVY DEPART-
MENT

February, 1903

IN the United States, the Navy Department
is the constituted organ of the government
for administering the navy. Naval administra-
tion exists for the purpose of providing a nation
v?ith an effective navy. Incidentally it also
administers — directs — the navy which it has
created and maintains. Provision is the object,
administration the method; the one is the end,
the other the means. It is desirable to keep intel-
ligently and continually in mind the distinction
between the two; for an invariable experience
teaches that the tendency of mankind, and es-
pecially of administrators, is to confound them.
Not only so, but even to raise the means into the
seat of the end; usurpation by gradual revolution.
Administration inclines to lose itself in itself, for-
getful of the end for which it has been established.
It is essential to guard against this error, by keeping
the end always in the foreground of consciousness,

51

52 Naval Administration and Warfare

as being the standard or test by which administra-
tive methods are to be judged.

The method of naval administration now in force
in the United States is the outcome of a gradual
development, into the particulars of which it is
unnecessary to enter. We are to deal with the
present; with historical antecedents only so far
as to throw light on existing conditions. The
Navy Department began with the institution of
the office of Secretary in 1798, when, also, the first
incumbent was appointed; and after various
experiences it reached its present constitution in
1842. Since then it has remained fixed in funda-
mental principles; but has been subject, necessa-
rily, to occasional considerable changes of detail
and adjustment, as the navy has grown with the
nation's growth, and as naval science has become
more complicated in its demands. The gradual
advance of the world in the mechanical arts has
brought with it a corresponding application of
those arts to maritime development in general,
and to naval warfare in particular.

The general system is as follows : The President
being, by the Constitution, commander-in-chief
of the army and navy. Congress has created by
law the office of Secretary of the Navy, a single
person, who relieves the President of the burden
of details. These details are of two principal kinds ;

U. S. Navy Department 53

namely, those that concern the operations of the
fleet all over the world, in peace and in war, which
is the military side of naval administration, and
those that relate to the creation and preservation of
material in its several varieties, — ships, guns,
engines, etc., — which is the civil side. As the
aggregation of duties under these two heads has
been found in practice far too great for any one
man to discharge, they have been again sub-
divided by law. For this purpose there exist side
by side two systems, military and civil, the Secre-
tary being at the head of both, as the representative
of the President. For the management of the fleet
in active service, in peace as in war, the end for
which the navy exists, the stream of control
descends through admirals, captains, and their
subordinate ofiicers. Each of these, in the measure
of his particular authority, which is regulated
by law, represents the Secretary, as the Secretary
does the President.

In practice, the extent of ocean in which the
United States habitually maintains forces for
the benefit of American interests is divided into
districts, called stations, mutually independent;
that is to say, in each such district there is one
oflUcer in supreme command of the whole, usually
an admiral, responsible directly and solely to
the Secretary. With him the officers in similar

54 Naval Administration and Warfare

command of other districts have in general no
authority to interfere. If, by particular circum-
stances, it becomes necessary for the squadron of
one such admiral to go, in whole or in part, into
the sphere of another, the rule is that the one senior
in rank takes command of the joint forces. The
independence of undivided command does not
then cease; it is simply transferred. Such excep-
tional cases do not invalidate the general state-
ment of the independence of each station. If the
commander of one, say the Asiatic Station, has
incidentally to pass through the district com-
manded by a junior, as, for instance, going through
the Mediterranean on his way to the East, he may
indeed by his temporary presence exercise the
authority inherent in his rank; but a serious inter-
ference with the arrangements of the regular
commander would need justification, and might
well entail censure, for the obvious reason that
the measures of a permanent incumbent should
not lightly be disturbed by an ad interim and
purely casual intruder, whose power would lapse
entirely as he passed beyond the imaginary lines
bounding the station.

The military movement of the fleet, the military
administration, being co-extensive with a geograph-
ical area, that is to say, with the seas of the world
which require the presence of the navy, is thus

U. S. Navy Department 55

conducted by the Secretary through means of
independent geographical districts, each with its
individual head. In like manner the field of
civil administration, which is concentrated and
localized at the Navy Department, for the crea-
tion and maintenance of material, the procure-
ment and training of officers and seamen, the
purchase and distribution of supplies of all kinds
needed by the navy, is districted among a number
of departments, mutually independent, called
bureaus, each having its particular head styled
the chief of bureau. Within his particular range
of duties, each of these, by specific provision of
law, is invested with the authority of the Secretary.
Orders from him are to be regarded as issued by
the Secretary, just as are the orders of the admiral
of a station; and no one of his colleague chiefs
of bureaus can there interfere with him. In their
totaHty the functions discharged by the bureau
chiefs embrace all that is understood by the " es-
tabhshment " of a navy; the establishment being
the permanent constituted force, — ships and men,

together with all the antecedent activities, such

as those of the navy yards, by which ships are
built and kept ready for service, and seamen
gathered and organized into crews.

At this point, when fully prepared to act, the
strict condition of estabhshment merges into that

56 Naval Administration and Warfare

of military operation, and passes under the charge
of the military officers — the admirals and their
subordinates. It is true, certainly, that as material
and supplies require frequent repair and renewal,
and crews occasional reinforcement and rehef,
the functions of the establishment need in some
degree to follow the ships in their career. For
this purpose the several bureaus have their repre-
sentatives among the official staff of each vessel,
the captain being at the head of the whole, as is
the Secretary over his bureau chiefs in Washing-
ton. In this manner each ship, for the purposes
of naval administration, reflects in miniature
the Navy Department, with which it is in continual
correspondence by regulated channels. In strict-
ness of method, as reflecting the ultimate respon-
sibility and control of the Secretary in the Depart-
ment, and the commander afloat, — admiral or
captain, — all such correspondence is addressed
through them, and by them distributed at either
end of the line. Of course, much of this is purely
routine and formal; but forms which represent
facts, as in this case unity and concentration of
authority are symbolized, are not to be discarded
lightly. What is commonly called red tape,
the circuition of documents, proceeds not from
concentration, but from dispersion and subdivision
of responsibility.

U. S. Navy Department 57

The term " naval administration," though actu-
ally co-extensive with the w^hole range of the
Secretary's authority, both in the establishment and
in the movements of the fleets, is commonly limited
in application to the activities antecedent to mili-
tary operations. Thus restricted, it becomes
immediately apparent that naval administration
is essentially civil in character, conditioned only
by the fact that it subserves a military profession.
In its methods it is strictly civil ; it is military only
in its end, which is to supply a military organiza-
tion with the men and implements needed for
operations of war. Carpenters use tools which
they could not make; which are made for them.
In this case the means and the end are both civil;
but the distinction is the same as that which obtains
between naval administration and naval opera-
tions. The tools of the naval seaman, from ad-
miral to enlisted man, are ships, guns, engines.
With these he does his naval work of every kind,
and they are provided for him by the naval ad-
ministration. The work is military, the provision
civil.

For instance, one chief function of naval admin-
istration is to design and build ships of war. This
is only a particular problem of marine architecture,
which is a civil calling; in application to naval
needs it becomes conditioned, specialized, but not

58 Naval Administration and War jar e

genetically distinct. To make a modern gun for
a specific purpose involves ingenuity of conception,
as well as delicate metallurgical and mechanical
processes, conditioned by particular knowledge
of ordnance questions; but there is nothing in
this, from design to completion, that demands
a military cast of mind, much less a military habit
of life. The naval man, the combatant officer, can
most adequately decide the kind of work he needs
his ship, or his gun, to do; he ought to be, by
acquirement and experience in handling, master of
the reasons which make such and such qualities
best for his use; but it by no means follows that
this aptitude to know the thing wanted entails
ability to make it. A man does not need to be a
tailor or a shoemaker to know what clothes or shoes
are best suited for his calling. Military capacity
of a very high order may go no further than to say.
What is needed in a ship, or a gun, is such and
such qualities; but it no less has a right to demand
that its opinions on this practical matter should be
ascertained and duly heeded. Manufacturers
of articles used by the public are compelled to
furnish what the public requires; for if they do
not they lose their customers. The man who uses
the tools is the final judge, and rightly; for he best
knows which of several is fittest for his purpose.
This is as true of a public military service as of a

U. S. Navy Department 59

private civil handicraft. In the latter, however,
competition ensures the survival of the fittest, be-
cause there is individual freedom of action on the
part of the vporkman. In the other, on the con-
trary, action is corporate, and there is no com-
petitor; except, indeed, the foreign navies, which
may become enemies on occasions of great national
urgency.

The eight bureaus of the Navy Department are
by title as follows: Yards and Docks, Construc-
tion and Repair, Steam Engineering, Ordnance,
Equipment, Supplies and Accounts, Navigation,
Medicine and Surgery. They are here arranged
in what may be considered the chronological order
of their relation to the preparation of a ship of
war for sea; the completion of her as a unit in
the naval establishment, ready to pass into the
military order as part of the fleet in active service.
The several navy yards, with their docks, are the
scene where goes on much of the work of ship-
building and repair, of gun-making, of placing
on board the engines. There supplies of all sorts
for the various departments are stored, and there
are bestowed the final touches of preparation to
ships built elsewhere. At a yard the ship receives
on board her crew and goes into commission; to it
she returns for repairs or to be laid up after a
cruise. It underlies and concentrates the local

60 Naval Administration and Warfare

activities of the several bureaus. Construction
is evidently the first stage in the evolution of the
finished ship; the engines probably will be being
built coincidently, but cannot be placed until the
hull has made a very considerable advance toward
completion. Ordnance is a word which speaks
for itself; the shipping of the guns is a later stage
in the vessel's progress. Equipment is a term
of less precise signification, because of more
varied and minute detail. It corresponds to fur-
nishing a building as a place to live and work in.
For instance, there is embraced under this com-
prehensive idea the extensive and intricate electric
system of lighting and motors, with the needed
dynamos. Hence, also, much that appertains to
the movable house which a ship is; for example,
anchors, charts, compasses, with navigation books
and instruments. For this reason, the Naval
Observatory and the Hydrographic and Compass
Offices, whence most of these appliances proceed,
or by which they are tested and corrected, are under
the Bureau of Equipment. In the days of sail,
Equipment supplied rigging and sails — the motive
power; so, in strict derivation, it now provides
coal, the motive power of to-day, distributing it
both to vessels and to coaling depots on foreign
stations.
The Bureau of Supplies and Accounts is the

U. S. Navy Department 61

purchasing agency of the navy. It buys for other
bureaus, subject to their requisition and inspec-
tion. The paymaster of each ship in commission
is its representative in this matter, under the
responsible control of her commander, as the
bureau itself is under that of the Secretary. Spe-
cifically, it buys and supplies, on its ov?n account,
the stores falling under the two great heads of
provisions and clothing. It keeps, also, the pay
accounts of officers and men, and pays them at
stated times. The Bureau of Navigation has,
by an historical devolution, of wrhich its name
gives no suggestion, inherited the charge of the
personnel of the navy, as vpell officers as enlisted
men. It regulates their admission, superintends
their training, preserves continuous records of
their service, and distributes them among the
vessels of the fleet. As men are alvpays of more
account than their tools, the function of the Bureau
of Navigation is the most eminent of all ; but also,
in the preparation of a ship for service, it is chron-
ologically nearly last, as the crew do not go on
board till the ship has been by the other bureaus
prepared for their dwelling upon conditions con-
sistent with health. This final requirement is
the charge of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery,
the importance of which may be measured by
considering how far a well man is more useful than
an invalid.

62 Naval Administration and Warfare

The general nature of the duties of each bureau
is sufficiently apparent; to particularize further
in this connection would simply involve the
reader in a mass of technical details. The essen-
tial fact to remark is that each bureau — except
Yards and Docks — has a distinct and mutually
independent function in each ship built and com-
missioned, as well as in the processes which
precede completion. This is the essential char-
acteristic of the United States Naval Adminis-
tration, deliberately adopted in 1842 to ensure
efficiency and responsibility, after long trial of a
different system. The Secretary's function, in-
trinsically one, was then, for administrative effect,
divided into five, and subsequently into eight
parts; the organic unity of which was found only
in their subordination to him, not in their relations
one to another. Consistency of action, therefore,
depends upon the Secretary's appreciation of the
necessities of the service in all the several broad
features which the bureaus represent — not only
from the side of the bureaus, but also from that
of the officers afloat — and upon his power to
reconcile the divergences of opinion inevitable be-
tween so many parties. Both for the purposes
of the establishment which the bureaus sustain,
and for the direction of naval operations which
admirals and captains execute, the Secretary

U. S. Navy Department 63

is the only unifying force. He has further to
recognize that the Navy Department, as repre-
sented by the bureaus, and the Department as
represented by the sea-officers, often look at
important matters from divergent points of view.

The Secretary frequently comes to his office
without previous experience, and is necessarily
immensely occupied with numerous calls on the
side where the Department touches the country
rather than the navy. He is apt to find himself,
therefore, not only called upon to decide between
several persons advocating different views on
matters largely new to him, but to do so under
conditions of pre-occupation which impede ade-
quate attention. The system provides him neither
a formulated policy nor an adviser; for, while
the bureau chief can properly give advice and
argue his views, it needs little knowledge of human
nature to see that he can seldom be free from
prepossession. He is, in short, rather an advocate
than an adviser.

Under this stress of work and of technical
inexperience, a secretary will naturally seek advice
by instituting boards; committees of qualified
men to discuss subjects and report to him con-
clusions. Such a board may be constituted, like
one the differences in which were recently reported
by the press, from the bureau chiefs themselves,

64 Naval Administration and Warfare

with perhaps one or two outside men to hold a
balance. In the case cited the matter under
consideration was the qualities to be realized
in a particular class of ships. Or, again, boards
may be composed, like the General Board, at the
head of which the admiral of the navy now is,
mostly of officers external to the administrative
system, to discuss questions of broad policy
connected with offensive and defensive measures,
requisite in case of war with this or that country.
Such a board might very properly influence the
general direction of administrative action, though
not the detailed execution; for the obvious reason
that the policy of the Department, as regards
number and qualities of ships, should rest upon a
clear appreciation of the probable nature of the
operations for which they will be wanted. These
boards, precisely analogous to committees of
Congress, and to commissions frequently insti-
tuted by civil authorities for special investigation,
are, in the strictest sense, advisory only. They
can relieve the Secretary of no responsibility, but
can assist him greatly by digestion of facts and
summarizing expert opinion upon the arguments
pro and con. During the Spanish war an ex
tempore board was constituted to give purely
military advice upon the strategic movements of
the fleet. It had no powers and, therefore, no

U. S. Navy Department 65

responsibility, except for expert advice given; all
orders w^ere the Secretary's own. It is open to
serious question whether in actual war such a
recourse is desirable. Responsibility for advice,
as well as for action, should then be single, un-
divided; but in peace a deliberative board, con-
tinuous in existence, may be of the utmost service
by the maturity and consecutiveness of the policy
evolved. Had there been such in 1898 there
would have been no need to create an instrumental-
ity specially for that occasion. In the hands of a
strong Secretary it would constitute a much
needed balance to the necessary, but somewhat
exaggerated, independence in action of the bu-
reaus ; for it would naturally regard matters from
the purely service point of view.

The utility of convening bodies of competent
men for the discussion of particular subjects is
indisputable; all experience testifies to it. The
difficulty with the navy is that the Secretary's
official competency to combine the action of the
several bureaus, in a steady, well digested, and
unified progress, demands a policy, and not merely
an administrative system tempered by boards
summoned by him. The test of a system of naval
administration, strictly so called, is its capacity
— inherent, not spasmodic — to keep the estab-
lishment of the navy abreast of the best professional

66 Naval Administration and Warfare

opinion concerning contemporary necessities, both
in quality and quantity. It needs not only to know
and to have what is best to-day, but to embody
an organic provision for watching and forecasting
to a reasonable future what will be demanded.
This may not be trusted to voluntary action or to
individual initiative. There is needed a constituted
organ to receive, digest, and then officially to state,
in virtue of its recognized office, what the highest
instructed professional opinion, the opinion of
the sea-officers, holds concerning the needs of the
navy at the moment; and for the future as far as
present progress indicates. It is not enough that
this or that chief of bureau, to use the nomenclature
of the United States administration, during his
term of office takes such measures as appear to him
sufficient to ascertain what is the opinion of the
combatant sea-officer, of the naval workman,
concerning his tools. Granting entire sufficiency
on the part of such bureau chief, it is not to his
office, but to himself, that it is due. The system
cannot claim the credit; nor can the system be
sure, for it makes no pretence to assure, that
such enterprise will be shown in other bureaus, or
in subsequent incumbents of the same bureau.
There is in the naval administration, as consti-
tuted by law, no organized provision to do the
evolutionary work, the sifting process, by which

U. S. Navy Department 67

in civil life the rough fighting test of supply and
demand, of competition in open market and free
usage, pronounces decisively upon the practical
merits of various instruments or methods of manu-
facture. The body of sea-officers, the v?orkmen
of the navy, receive for use instruments upon
vrhich the system provides them no means of
expressing the professional opinion as to their
adaptability, relatively to service conditions or
to other existing instruments. Whatever harm
may result from this falls not upon the work-
men only, but upon those also for whom the work
is done; that is, the nation.

Since the above was written, there have ap-
peared in the London Times a series of three
papers by the late Director of Naval Construction
for the British navy, Sir William White, who for
eighteen years supervised the designing of all its
war-ships. A quotation from these articles defines
aptly the just relation between the designation
of necessary qualities, by the combatant sea-
officers of the navy, and the embodiment of these
qualities in the finished design of a naval vessel.
Itahcs are mine.

Sir William writes : " Ships have to be built for
many different services, and each navy has its special
requirements. It is inevitable, therefore, that the
decision as to the best combination of qualities to be

68 Naval Administration and Warfare

embodied in any type must be left to the respon-
sible authorities. For the ships of the Royal Navy
that decision rests with the First Lord of the Ad-
miralty and his colleagues on the Board. The
policy of naval construction, the types of ships to
be built, and the qualities of offence, defence,
speed, coal endurance, and other characteristics
to be embodied in each type, are considered in
detail and determined by the Lords Commissioners,
the Board of Admiralty, acting, with the assist-
ance of their technical advisers, as a ' Committee
on Designs.' In addition to the large experience
of the distinguished officers serving on the Board,
there are available reports and suggestions from
officers afloat, dealing with the capabilities and
performances of existing ships, possible improve-
ments, and the introduction of new types. The
chief responsibility for the preparation of designs,
embodying the decisions of the Board, rests on the
Director of Naval Construction," [called in the
United States Navy the Chief Constructor] . . .
" But for the conditions themselves the First
Lord and his colleagues are responsible. They
decide the policy of our naval construction, and
determine the armament, armour, speed, and coal
endurance for each class of ship added to the
fleet. . . . My duty and responsibilities have been
to design and direct the construction of strong,

U. S. Navy Department 69

safe, and seaworthy vessels, having the offensive
and defensive powers, speeds, and coal supplies,
determined by successive Boards of Admiralty."

In a succeeding paper Sir William writes : " In
such a complex and difficult question as the
selection of armaments, the responsible authority,
fully informed and constituted as the Board of
Admiralty is, must be more capable of balancing
opposing claims, and selecting the most efficient
combination, than any individual. The questions
involved affect fighting efficiency, and are not pri-
marily questions of naval architecture."

In Great Britain the Navy Department is itself
a board — the Board of Admiralty; not, as with
us, an individual. In general principle, and as an
administrative system, I prefer our own; but in
the particular relation estabhshed between military
specification of desired qualities, and the narrower
sphere of technical design, by which those qualities
are to be realized, I find the method above de-
scribed much superior, for the Board of Admiralty
embraces an extremely strong element of matured
expert professional knowledge, chosen from the
commanding officers of the Navy. There is in our
administrative system nothing answering to it;
and the defect not only is grave, but lies at the
very source of the provision for naval wants.

As has been said, the present system of inde-

70 Naval Administration and Warfare

pendent bureaus has now been in operation for
sixty years. This fact in itself affords strong
presumption in its favor; and it has many merits.
It has also shown very good results, regarded as a
machine, which every system more or less is.
A machine is an organization, an assemblage of
parts, which has great powers of work in certain
fixed directions, purely routine. It is the essence
of a machine that it moves round and round in an
appointed path; but it has within itself neither
motive force nor directive impulse. Both these,
which are the two factors of active life, come to it
from without. As the steam slackens, the engine
works feebly; as the hand at the helm is weak, it
errs blindly. All the time it is the same machine.
Consequently, put on steam in a national impulse,
or supply a strong master in a particular Secretary
or President, and after a few jars of rusty joints,
the renewal possibly of some worn-out coupling,
it takes up at once its intended work, doing it
steadily, strongly, and efficiently.

Such fluctuations of efficiency, dependent upon
external conditions, are characteristic of all ma-
chines. They are not to be cured radically by the
introduction of new parts, adding to the machinery ;
for that makes it none the less a machine than
before, even though as a machine it may be
improved. It may be possible, however, so to

U. S. Navy Department 71

contrive the connection between machinery and
power, which with us is, in the last analysis^ the
popular understanding and will, as to cause energy
to be supplied and sustained in reasonable pro-
portion to the work required; which work is the
maintenance and development of the navy on the
lines and scale demanded by the possibilities of
war to-day, and of the evident to-morrow. The
grave lapses of the past, in this respect, are facts
not to be ignored, nor safely to be repeated. Pro-
vision against them, to be enduring, as proposed,
must be more continuous in operation than a suc-
cession of individual administrators can be.
At present the President and Secretary, the one
by the Constitution, the other by law, are the
administrative connecting Hnks between the coun-
try and the navy. Broadly considered, in their
official relation to the administrative system, the
President and Secretary are parts of the machine,
liable with the rest to feel the slackening of energy
when it relaxes in the nation. The desired stead-
fastness of purpose is not to be found in any succes-
sion of tenures of office; for with the expiry of
each there is a solution of continuity. Only cor-
porate Hfe endures, and there is none such in our
present system.

The experience of the great War of Secession
bears abundant evidence to the capacity for work

72 Naval Administration and Warfare

of the bureau system, composed as it is of a number
of chiefs mutually independent in their respective
spheres, and, therefore, individually and solely
responsible for the work entrusted to them. Sel-
dom, if ever, in the history of the w^orld, has a
naval organization had thrown upon it the sudden
and immense expansion of work that the Navy
Department had then to meet. In 1865 there were
employed in active operations of war 7,600 officers
and 50,000 seamen, more than five-fold the num-
bers prior to the war; and the fleet had increased
from 69 vessels to 671, 208 of which had been built
or begun while hostilities were going on.' No
radical administrative change was made by Con-
gress. The number of bureaus was increased
from five to eight, with a corresponding subdivision
of labor; but each of the eight chiefs was as inde-
pendent in his own office as the five had been in
theirs. This was the essence of the system ; there
was no let or hindrance to any one of them, by the
interposition of a recognized authority, — man or
board, — between him and the Secretary, or be-
tween him and his work. Urgent decision was not
fettered by the requirement of consultation;
responsibility could not be escaped under cover
of colleagues, consenting or opposing. The bonds

' These numbers are taken from Soley's "The Blockade
and the Cruisers."

XJ. S. Navy Department 73

of power and of accountability lay upon each man,
spurring him to the height of his abilities, freeing
him from every trammel of interference, and en-
couraging him by the sense that credit as well as
blame would be his alone.

Individual power and individual responsibility
are the fundamental merits of the bureau system.
Its defect is lack of co-ordination. Happily, this
lucky country, which at its first cast got Farragut
for the most critical command of the War of Seces-
sion, as in 1898 it found Dewey at Manila and
Sampson off Santiago, in 1861 unwittingly intro-
duced into the naval administration a singularly
fit man; an official who filled, without particular
definition, the precise place which was needed then,
and is equally needed now, in peace as in war, to
impart unity of direction and effort to the eight
distinct impulses under which naval expansion was
advancing. The labors of the chief overseer, the
Secretary, under the mandate of the times and the
people, plainly demanded personal assistance;
and it happened — the word is exact — that there
was selected for Assistant Secretary a man whose
particular fitness only his subsequent performance
could have demonstrated. Mr. Fox had been a
naval officer until he reached maturity, and after-
wards became an active business man. He there-
fore brought to his position a close knowledge

74 Naval Administration and Warfare

of naval conditions, which had not advanced
materially beyond those of his own career, and
at the same time an administrative experience
which enabled him to utilize, without impeding,
the separate energies of the Department's chief
subordinates. There was thus introduced into
the heart of the administration, in close contact
with and influence upon the bureau system, the
special aptitudes of the naval ofiicer for the guid-
ance of the war in its military phase, and for
adapting to the particular conditions the broad
lines of the huge expansion which the then estab-
lishment had to undergo. The activities of the
estabhshment, of the Navy Department on its
civil side, were thus harmonized with the require-
ments of the military situation.

It would require more than a single article to
express in detail the multifold character of the
work thus done for and by the establishment; the
vessels of various kinds and construction designed
and built; the vessels bought and altered for spe-
cific purposes; the corresponding developments
of armament. All these were governed in concep-
tion by the necessity to meet conditions, varying
from expeditions up Southern creeks and bayous,
including therein the whole vast river system of the
Mississippi Valley, to deep-sea cruises extending
to the waters of Asia and the Mediterranean.

U. S. Navy Department 75

There was involved the creation of armored fleets
to contend, some with fortifications in shallow,
tortuous inland streams, others with works pro-
tecting seacoast harbors. There was to be insti-
tuted and maintained the most extensive and
grinding blockade ever yet made effective, actually
as well as technically. Underlying the whole,
however, was the military conception, the exact
appreciation of the military necessities. Under
the guidance of this were laid down the general
lines upon which the bureau administrations were
to advance in their activities. This was the cutting
out of the work, as distinct from its executive
superintendence. From this comprehension of the
decisive lines, this military sense, proceeded the
unity of effort and of effect wherein consists the
excellence of a work of art, which warfare in its
highest sense is. The specific character of any
particular war creates of itself certain central
features upon which attention must fasten; and
to which effort must correspond, if success is to
be attained. It was peculiarly fortunate that the
War of Secession found, placed at the centre of
the civil administration of the navy, a person es-
pecially qualified, by nature and training, to con-
centrate in his own person professional compre-
hension, broadened to meet the case by close
intercourse with leading officers; and with this

76 Naval Administration and Warfare

to combine influence, real if not formal, upon the
general direction to be taken by the eight several
branches of the civil administration.

The very great success of the navy in the War
of Secession is universally admitted and needs
no insistence; but, though frequently narrated
historically, it is doubtful vphether it is yet philo-
sophically appreciated, or even understood. For
present purposes it is sufficient to note the fact
that there was then found within the Navy Depart-
ment — not existing there before, but introduced
fortuitously for the occasion ^ a means by which
the enthusiastic determination of the nation could
take shape in intelligent comprehension of the
issues and in strongly co-ordinated effort; while
to the satisfactory maintenance of the activity
thus directed the bureau system was found ade-
quate. Adequate, that is, to meet a great emer-
gency under the spur of a great impulse, communi-
cated through an instrumentality which for the
purposes of the war focussed the several separate
energies. It is to be borne in mind, however, that
there was the emergency with its pressure; that it
had its clear, distinctive features, susceptible of
recognition ; and that there was present somewhat
accidentally the human instrument to recognize
them, and to realize in the work of the Depart-
ment the means necessary to meet them. All

U. S. Navy Department 77

these constituted pressure, steam, directive force.
Granted this, the machine showed its efficiency.

Emergency is not always with us, though the
need of an up-to-date navy is. The preparations
of peace have their distinctive features, equally
recognizable with those of war, but less clearly
visible to intelligence unstartled by alarm at the
doors. The bureau system carries no instru-
mentality to study and formulate them; to main-
tain constant attention upon, not this or that
branch of naval progress, but upon the field as
a whole; to co-ordinate the various elements of
advance in their relative importance; and by
such sustained apprehension, communicated to the
nation, to maintain a pressure which shall con-
stantly ensure a navy abreast of the contemporary
situation in quantity and quality. It is possible
for any Secretary to create such an instrumentality,
and the tendency of recent Secretaries has been
in that direction; but it depends upon the will
of the particular incumbent; its influence is what
he chooses to attribute to his own creature; and
he may at any moment discontinue it. It is no
part of the bureau system, and its life is always
precarious. Of inferior influence to a bureau, in
that it has no legal existence, its position is less
that of a subordinate than of a dependent.

The War of Secession showed the merits of the

78 Naval Administration and Warfare

bureau system under favorable forcing conditions.
Peace speedily demonstrated its defects; rather,
perhaps, the defects of a system constituted wholly
of independent departments — the exact opposite
of cabinet government. Independent depart-
ments — bureaus — through lack of concert to-
gether, lose in influence upon their head more
than they gain in individual freedom of action;
and the loss is national. In 1865 the nation
reacted violently from the extreme tension of
war, and the effect was manifest inevitably
throughout the mihtary branches of the govern-
ment, as constituted. The principal work of the
Departments of War and Navy became the reduc-
duction of the huge establishments, and the dis-
position of the quantities of accumulated material
now no longer needed. Though the then adminis-
tration had nearly four years to run, Mr. Fox
retired shortly, leaving no successor in name or
in fact. With him disappeared what had been
virtually an institution, rather than an individual
or an office. His nominal position of Assistant
Secretary was not revived till over twenty years
later.

Retrenchment — a word never to be uttered
with disrespect — now became the order of the
day; but it was not graduated by any systematic
provision for studying the needs of the navy as a

U. S. Navy Department 79

whole, watching contemporary progress, and
defining to the country the evident necessities
of naval policy. There was no sentinel stationed
on the watch-tower to take note of danger; and
volunteers, who were not wanting, rarely have
the authority or perseverance to arouse national
attention. The bureaus went on doing their
several works, and doubtless very respectably.
Excellent boards, constituted by the Department,
from time to time made wise reports. Secretary
succeeded Secretary in a complacency that the
country seemed fully to share. The mihtary
branch, of course, was dissatisfied. It realized
the peril, concrete before its eyes in foreign ships
and its own decadent, obsolete relics of former
days; but the military branch was not — and is
not — represented in the legalized scheme of
naval administration. There is in the Navy De-
partment, besides the Secretary, no daysman that
lays his hand on civil and mihtary both ; upon the
establishment and upon the ships in commission.
In the Navy Department, as constituted by law,
there are sea-officers at the head of bureaus;
but by their office they are bureau chiefs, charged
with details of the establishment, not representa-
tives of the military necessities. They have no
obHgation, and may have no incHnation, to meddle
with concerns of the broad naval policy which

80 Naval Administration and Warfare

does, or should, determine and co-ordinate the
general march of the system as a whole.

It would be rash to affirm that there was,
for nearly two decades following the war, any
formulated determination that could be called
a naval policy. In result, doubtless, there was
realized a course of action, which might be styled
a policy; that of apathetic drift. The system itself
provided no instrument for studying the data, or
evolving the pohcy, except the Secretary himself;
and the successive Secretaries, coming often new
to their work, were as chanced by choice of suc-
cessive Presidents. The several bureau chiefs
were personally no more responsible than any other
individual official for the general regress. Each
had his bureau; but, if he managed it as well as
the Secretary's measures demanded, the rest was
not his concern. There was nowhere in the
Department any person, or any body, whose
business it was to represent to the Secretary the
perilous decline which was rapidly verging upon
annihilation. There was nobody at fault for not
speaking, nor anybody whose office required the
intrusion of a scheme of resuscitation. The future
depended upon the personality of a Secretary, not
upon a provident system.

Equally with the details of the War of Secession,
it is inexpedient to enter upon the instances which

U. S. Navy Department 81

illustrate the decadence of the ensuing period.
To patch and repatch into temporary eflEciency
vessels, excellent for their day, but which, if still
in their prime, would be worthless under the
changed conditions ; to build a few, a very few, new
ships of substantially the same type as the old,
and therefore no more fitted for modern warfare;
to mount contentedly on their ancient carriages the
old, and in their time most useful, guns which
had fought the recent war; to " convert " a few
of them, from the large stock left on hand, into
makeshift imitations of modern weapons — such
was the general course of administration, awaiting
the coming of a Secretary who should realize that
the first necessity of policy was to sweep away
a sham, and bring the country face to face with
the fact that it had no navy. The bureaus worked
on perfectly respectably, meeting the demands
of that day accordingly as they had met the stren-
uous period of the War of Secession, and as under
a new impulse they were again to meet, and fulfil,
the more complicated, if not more onerous, re-
quirements of re-creating the establishment. As
a machine, in short, the system was good; it
adapted itself readily and efficiently to the work
before it, be it more or less, and showed conclu-
sively that it required only the impulse from with-
out, and the necessary supply of grist, a work

82 Naval Administration and Warfare

at high speed and high power with correspondent
results.

In time, though much overdue, the awaited
man came, and with him a new impulse. By the
accident of a Secretary determined to face the
conditions, the just discontent of the active navy
found voice and expression in a new and positive
policy. It is, however, clearly a great evil that
throughout a prolonged period of popular reaction
and lethargy, a principal department of the gov-
ernment should have contained within itself no
principle of continuous efficiency, and have re-
mained dependent upon the chances of a series
of individuals, bound to no sequence of interest or
of action, and very possibly, as in instances ex-
perience has shown, incapable of realizing a
policy or imparting an impulse. Most branches
of the executive government find themselves natu-
rally represented in the continuous interests of
civil life, which constitute for them an abiding
impulse, directive as well as motive, to keep abreast
of the time. The navy and army lack this ; the
navy conspicuously so. It is therefore not suffi-
cient that each has a Secretary, as have the De-
partments of the Treasury, the Interior, and
others. They need within their administrative
constitution something which shall answer to
the continuous interest of the people in civil details;

U. S. Navy Department 83

something which, while wholly subordinate to
every Secretary, shall embody a conservative
and progressive service idea, and in so doing shall
touch both the public, from whose sense of national
needs impulse comes, and the administration,
ashore and afloat, upon whose response to impulse
efficiency depends. That a Secretary can do this
has been abundantly shown; the dangerous possi-
bility, also amply demonstrated, is that several in
sequence may lack either will, or power, or pro-
fessional understanding. Though the office lives,
the Secretary dies every four years, and who
shall guarantee the succession .? The value of
the office will not be diminished by such a some-
thing as here advocated, without executive author-
ity, consultative only and advisory; responsible
not for action taken — for it should have no power
to act — but for opinion expressed ; above all,
continuous in its activity, which implies corporate
life, maintaining sound tradition by its consecu-
tiveness, yet preserved from stagnation by changes
of membership, periodical but not simultaneous.
Executive authority, like executive responsibility,
must be undivided, single. No qualification
is admissible upon the powers of the Secretary, as
the President's representative. The bureaus,
mutually independent, are wholly dependent on
him when he sees fit directly to interpose. Where

84 Naval Administration and Warfare

they clash, as at times they do, he holds the bal-
ance, and his say is final. These conditions no
instructed man of affairs would wish to modify.
Yet it remains that in these various matters Secre-
taries have often to act upon personal judgment,
with limited personal knowledge. Under such
conditions one man may easily vacillate in a hne
of policy ; how much more a series of men differing
in personal traits and acquired information. The
utility of a steadying factor, of a body of digested
professional knowledge, continuously applied to
the problems of naval advance, is evident. It is
demonstrated also by the increasing disposition
of Secretaries to assemble standing boards of
officers for the consideration of professional prob-
lems, the conclusions of whom constitute for him
expert advice, without any infringement upon his
official action. Useful though these may be, they
have, nevertheless, no place in the administrative
system. Creatures of the Secretary's will, there
is no assurance of their permanency; yet, the
essence of their utility will consist in their em-
bodying a policy, which they can only do by per-
manence. Such policy, like the action of a bureau
chief, will ever be subject to the Secretary's alter-
ation; his personal characteristics will modify
it; but there can be no more doubt of the utility
of such an embodied policy than there can be

U. S. Navy Department 85

of a settled national tradition like those about
entangling alliances, or against European inter-
ference in this hemisphere.

It is in the lack of permanent tenure by the Secre-
tary himself that is to be seen the most cogent
argument for such a continuous institution, inte-
rior to the legalized system of administration. A
steady incumbent, personally competent, would in
time become like the president of a great railroad,
or other business corporation; himself an embodied
policy, the consistency of which on certain general
lines is a recognized advantage. With unlimited
time a Secretary should acquire that personal
knowledge of details, and acquaintance with the
characteristics of his subordinates, which are es-
sential to the successful administrator. No such
incumbency is to be expected under our general
system of executive government. To supply
the defect inherent in temporary tenure and period-
ical change, there is required for the Navy Depart-
ment a tradition of policy; analogous in fact to
the principles of a political party, which are con-
tinuous in tradition, though progressive in modifi-
cation. These run side by side with the policy
of particular administrations; not affecting their
constituted powers, but guiding general lines of
action by an influence, the benefit of which, through
the assurance of continuity, is universally admitted.

PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE

WAR BETWEEN JAPAN

AND RUSSIA

Written during the War

PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE WAR
BETWEEN JAPAN AND RUSSIA

August, 1904

A NOTICEABLE feature of the current
war between Japan and Russia is the singu-
lar defect and inaccuracy of details furnished
concerning the successive military and naval situa-
tions and movements. Doubtless, a similar im-
perfection of information is encountered, and
must be expected, in all sequences of current events.
Contemporaries seldom know the exact truth
concerning that which passes around them, and
only after long and patient study does the chroni-
cler of a later day even approach a full and correct
statement of occurrences, in their relation of cause
and effect. The complete and balanced narrative,
which the modern historian rightly sets before
himself as an ideal standard, is, however, a very
different thing from the substantially accurate
information which is demanded by the man of
affairs, civil or military, called upon to keep
abreast of the professional movement of his day, to

89

90 Naval Administration and Warfare

be prepared himself to act in the Hght of the fullest
accessible knowledge, but content also to accept, as
an inevitable condition of all practical life, some
degree of obscurity, of doubt, attaching to the
problem he has to solve. The " Faites moi savoir "
of Napoleon is checked always by his equally
imperative dictum that war cannot be made with-
out running risks. No midway position between
these two maxims is tenable; reconcilement is
to be found only in the frank and cordial em-
bracing of both. It is indispensable to get the
fullest data that can be had, by the exercise of every
means at command; but it is no less indispensable
then to go forward, working from the basis of
what has been learned, however imperfectly,
and advancing tentatively, but firmly, towards
the solution of the difficulty immediately in hand.
The man who waits for absolute certainty, before
moving, will with rare exceptions reach his
decisions too late.

So far as these reflections are just, they apply
not only to the general officer commanding in
actual war, whether by land or sea, but to all others
who belong to the military professions, even
though their nation at the moment be in the happy
enjoyment of peace. The application is not
merely to those especially charged with the collec-
tion of intelligence, and the digestion from it of a

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 91

formulated military policy; whether such policy
be strategic, or tactical, or involve a serious modi-
fication of weapons and organization, of army
or fleet, in view of novel experiences. Men thus
situated, at the headquarters of information or
control, are undoubtedly favored with peculiar
opportunity for learning and judging; but the
greater precision and certainty thus afforded to
the few, in virtue of their momentary duties, by
no means absolves from similar effort those who,
at a distance and engaged in more secular routine,
possess only the fragmentary data to be gathered
or inferred from the daily reports of the press.
Indeed, as a mere matter of exercising mihtary
intelligence, the man who thus employs his reason,
upon the partial and often contradictory rumors
of the flying hours, occupies more nearly the posi-
tion of a responsible commander in war, whose
estimate of the situations confronting him depends
upon tidings coming through a dozen channels,
continually flowing in from divergent quarters, all
partial, mostly colored with error, and often at
variance with each other.

The advantage of accustoming the mind to
such valuations is very great. Natural or acquired,
the faculty, like every other, grows in the using,
and tends ever to be most ready when most wanted.
In the sphere of reflection it corresponds to the

92 Naval Administration and Warfare

trained military " judgment of ground " by the
physical eye, an aptitude of the highest and most
universally recognized importance. I was im-
mensely gratified, as well as interested, to receive
a few days ago from a young officer of our Ameri-
can navy just such an analysis and criticism of
the respective movements of the Japanese and
Russian fleets on June 23, when the latter as-
tonished the world by bringing into the open the
ducks long supposed to be not only lame but
hopelessly crippled. The facts were those given
in Admiral Togo's despatch, communicated to the
world in ample detail in the Times (weekly edition)
of July I ; but, abortive as the proceeding proved,
the attention of the officer in question was arrested,
and he supplied an interpretation and inferences
which by their justness of appreciation gave evi-
dence, to my mind, of one who had contem-
plated the possibilities open to fleets situated as
these were, and was consequently prepared at
once to understand and value the several move-
ments. None will question that such an one is, pro
tanto, more ready to act intelligently and instantly,
should occasion arise for him. Situations will not
be unfamiliar; just as the eye trained to judge
ground quickly detects essential identity amid
superficial divergences, or at least finds the
recurrence of certain features, the bearing of

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 93

which upon the field of action is at once appar-
ent.

An apt, and somewhat comical, illustration of
the general darkness, with occasional rays of light,
amid which the outside observer of the present
war gropes, is to be found in the unintelligible
names, variously spelled, of the unfamiliar locali-
ties, which encumber without elucidating the des-
patches of generals and the accounts of corre-
spondents. The same feature prevails in the maps,
between which and the texts there is that fre-
quent discrepancy which the officer in the field
finds in the reports of spies or deserters. I have
just (August 5) been damaging my eyes, and keep-
ing my temper, holding in one hand a map and in
the other a narrative; the general result being
that, with the exception of certain points of major
interest, the reader must be content to find any
particular name in one and not expect the luxury
of seeing it in both. Nevertheless, even with these
disadvantages, and the imperfect knowledge of
the face of the country, which I apprehend em-
barrasses most inquirers — except, perhaps, the
general staflFs of the contending armies — here and
there a clue emerges which seems to justify some
inferences as to the strategic plan of the Japanese,
to whom constantly superior numbers permit the
advantage of initiative. Such inferences, so far

94 Naval Administration and Warfare

as correct, and after all allowance for their merely
partial accuracy, possess a distinct advantage.
They involve, as before said, a habit of mind which
tends always to improve. Nor is this practice
useful to military men only, but to laymen as well ;
because in these days, although military questions
in their details are a specialty, the welfare of the
nation, above all in representative governments,
is furthered by a wide interest and appreciation
of military necessities among citizens of average
intelligence. To affirm this is to say no more than
all recognize with reference to social and econom-
ical questions, the solution of which depends upon
general interest and understanding of the broader
bearings, although minute detailed knowledge is
the prerogative of specialists.

Again, and more notably, the very imperfection
of current information to a certain extent promotes
comprehension, by preventing the intelligence from
losing itself amid a mass of details — a very com-
mon infirmity. This uncertainty forces attention to
fasten on the broad general lines of action, which
constitute the determinative features of mihtary
situations; whether these are limited to a narrow
area, or are of world-wide geographical extension,
as are the military interests of the British Empire.
For the specialist, even, these are the most im-
portant; while for the outsider, they are at once

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 95

the most easy and the only ones to be securely
grasped. They resemble essentially general prin-
ciples, which undoubtedly in the first instance
are formulated only by the observation and colla-
tion of innumerable details; but which, once
established, far exceed in illuminative and directive
value, as guides to opinion and action, any un-
digested accumulation of the details on which they
are based. A principle in warfare, like a generali-
zation in science, is a result; but, when firmly
grounded, the details by which it was reached
may be disregarded by the average man, who for
his own guidance needs to know only the result,
not the method of its attainment. The case of
weapons is precisely analogous. What a given
ship, or gun, or submarine boat will do, what the
result reached in it, this the military man, or the
interested citizen, needs to know; but this ascer-
tained, the details of construction or manipulation,
which issue in the result, are not necessary to all,
but only to those specially concerned in manu-
facture or handling.

It is this general line of thought that I propose to
follow in this paper, basing my examination of the
salient facts, commonly if not quite precisely
known, upon the broad general principles which
seem to me applicable to the particular case, and
neglecting details; not as being in themselves

96 Naval Administration and Warfare

immaterial, but still secondary and in a measure
confusing. Imperfect and contradictory state-
ments, being among the inevitable conditions of
the problem, I accept in such degree as judgment
may assign to them, in developing or modifying
conclusions not depending primarily upon them,
but otherwise reached. In this Russo-Japanese
war, as in others, much that is instructive to the
specialist, and ultimately must be sifted and ap-
preciated by him, may safely be passed over for
the moment even by the military professions
themselves in general, and yet more by the lay
observer. These are of the nature of details, of
methods, and correspond essentially to the various
processes of manufacture by which the result
of a finished implement is produced; or, more
nearly still, to the several stages of progress, of
alternate failure, perplexity, and success, through
which the conceiver of some great design advances
to the full development and materialization of his
idea. The particularities of tactics, the special
difficulties or advantages presented by the ground
over which the armies are fighting, the efficacy
of the several weapons employed in the different
branches of the two services, the problem of trans-
portation involved, are all of this character of
detail. They minister to the fulfilment of the great
design of the war, and are to it indispensable

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 97

factors ; but they are means, not ends. Whether
well or ill managed, they are without effect upon
the general principles which should dictate the
direction to be given to military effort. It is not
said, nor will for a moment be maintained, that
the capacity or incapacity displayed in the direction
of these matters will not affect very seriously the
outcome of the operations involved. The worth
of the best modelled ship would be seriously
vitiated by bad materials used in building, or bad
workmanship; but the designing of the model
is after all the loftiest, as it is the most determina-
tive element of efficiency, and the model of the
ship, having reference to the work for which she
is intended, corresponds with great precision to
the plan of a campaign by land or sea, to compass
the objects of a war. That plan, carried out, is
the grand result to which all the minor details
are the ministers. They may for the time very well
remain invisible to the observer who wishes to
appreciate the conduct of the war; just as the
vast array of calculations, which underlie the dis-
positions of weights in a finished ship, are not
necessary in order fully to comprehend a state-
ment of her powers or weaknesses as a weapon of
war, or to criticize the manner of her handling in
particular circumstances.
When carried to successful conclusion, a plan

98 Naval Administration and Warfare

of campaign stands revealed as a result; but while
in execution, on lines known only to the few
persons responsible, there is seen only a military
process, a sequence of action, the study of which
from day to day, by the stimulus it imparts to
reasoned speculation, to forecast, is profoundly
educative to military men. It is also illuminative to
others, who will be at the trouble to furnish their
intellects with the few chief ascertained principles
of warfare. In the case before us, owing to the
secluded character of the scene of war, to the care
taken by both parties to conceal the essential
facts of their numbers and conditions, and, it
must be added, to the strong national bias color-
ing the reports of many individual correspondents,
and others, there is an imperfection of detailed in-
formation, which gives the additional zest of diffi-
culty to the problem, and of enjoyment to progress
made in its solution. It is in this condition that
the subject is, at this moment of writing; but a
stage of development has been reached which
permits, with some degree of certainty, an expres-
sion of opinion on leading questions of principle.
Prominent among these doubtless is that of the
retention of Port Arthur by the Russians, during
the moments when evacuation was possible. They
did not abandon it; and, if I correctly remember,
this determination was widely and severely cen-

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 99

sured as a concession to national pride, to political
considerations of humiliation involved, but in
contradiction to sound military principle. The
question has additional interest, because analo-
gous to the still recent instance of Ladysmith,
in the South African War, with which possibly
may be conjoined the less defensible tenure of
Glencoe and Dundee. In matters of detail the
two cases present large differences; but how is
it as to the principle involved .? I should imagine
that there must now (August, 1904) be much
less doubt of the propriety of the Russian resolu-
tion than there was three months ago; just as I
cannot but think that, as time leaves farther
behind the period of the Boer War, there will be
an increasing conviction that the occupation of
Ladysmith was neither an error in the beginning
nor a misfortune to the future of the war. Why ?
Because, in the first place, it arrested the Boer
invasion of Natal, by threatening their line of
communications; and, secondly, it detained before
the besieged place a body of enemies which in the
later part of the hostilities would have been more
formidable elsewhere. I apprehend that Port
Arthur has fulfilled, and continues to fulfil, the
same function towards the Japanese, though it
seems much more evident now than at first.
The gradual development of operations makes it

100 Naval Administration and Warfare

to my mind increasingly clear that the number
of Russians there, plus their artificial advantages
of fortification, — which evacuation would have
surrendered, — are much more useful to the
general plan of campaign than they would be if
with Kuropatkin. To carry Port Arthur, or even
to maintain an investment, the Japanese must be
more numerous than the garrison; therefore, had
the place been abandoned, the aggregate of troops
transferred to Kuroki would have exceeded de-
cisively those added to his opponent.

But the Japanese might have given Port Arthur
the go-by. Scarcely; no more than the Boers
could have invaded Natal in force, leaving Lady-
smith in their rear. It is not disputed, I believe,
that the control of the sea is fundamental to
Japan. Abandonment of the place by Russia
meant destruction to the fleet within; and that
destruction meant the release of Togo's ships
from a wearing and injurious blockade, with
freedom to concentrate effort in protection of the
general communications of his country, as well
commercial as military. The recent exploits
of the Vladivostok squadron would have been
much curtailed, if not absolutely prohibited, had
Togo been able to leave the neighborhood of Port
Arthur. Apparently, if Port Arthur holds out, it
will be impossible to check the Vladivostok ships

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 101

seriously before ice forms; and the derange-
ment of Japanese communication with the outer
world, particularly in the matter of warlike sup-
plies, may prove, probably will prove, a very
serious matter to a nation still relatively unde-
veloped, and carrying a heavy financial burden.
The Japanese Natal has been invaded, and the
timidity of neutral commerce, being under no
strong bonds of necessity to seek Japan, will
indirectly second the direct action of the Russian
commerce destroyers. It is not necessary to deny
the illegality of the Russian action, in sinking
an uncondemned neutral, in order to recognize the
importance of the Vladivostok squadron's freedom
to act as a belligerent factor. Several prizes have
reached Vladivostok, and with proper provision
of supernumerary crews it should be possible
frequently to carry in vessels as long as Port
Arthur stands. Recapture by Japanese cruisers,
unless distinctly rather the rule than the exception,
will not detract from the moral effect upon in-
tending shippers, nor from its material result
in rarer supply and enhanced cost to the custo-
mer.

Since this was written, a letter of a Times corre-
spondent, dated July lo (Times of August 1 6)
reveals, what was perhaps before known but had
escaped my own attention, that the effect of the

102 Naval Administration and Warfare

first exploits of the Vladivostok squadron had been
to transfer Kamimura's division from before the
port itself to the Straits of Tsu Shima ; a strategic
position vital to occupy, in defence of the Japanese
transports maintaining the military communica-
tions with Manchuria and Korea. " Kamimura's
squadron is not povs^erful enough to blockade the
two entrances to Vladivostok. It has been com-
pelled to adopt the minor role of sealing the Tsu
Shima Straits, so as to cover the line of communi-
cation southward of that point. The naval people
pray daily for freedom to wipe out the score Vla-
divostok has run up against them." It is obvious,
of course, that if Port Arthur had been aban-
doned, this desired freedom would be had; if it
falls, Kamimura can be reinforced, Vladivostok
adequately blockaded, and the whole naval situa-
tion reversed. This is only another way of saying
that the retention of Port Arthur has caused all
this embarrassment to the Japanese, including the
serious possible effects to their communications
with the external world. The effect over a month
ago, the date of the letter quoted, is graphically
portrayed by the writer:

" The three big cruisers stationed in Vladivos-
tok, and their accompanying swarm of torpedo
craft, are so many thorns in the side of Japan.
It irks her grievously that, while winning signal

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 103

successes on the principal stage, there should be
a by-play of unpunished raids against her own
merchantmen, transports, and peaceful settlers;
that the sea which goes by her name should be an
open field for her enemy's enterprises; that her
shores should be exposed to attack by a com-
paratively petty force; and that, while she has
swept the main body of the Russians out of Western
Korea, marauding bands of Cossacks should defy
her along the northwestern shore of the peninsula.
It is difficult to remedy this flagrant fault in the
situation, until the fleet can be freed from its
all-absorbing duties at Port Arthur."

With all this should be coupled the fact that
after the sinking of the Petropavlovsk, April 14,
Togo had detached several ships to reinforce
Kamimura. It would seem probable that he had
to recall them, after the Russian ships had been
repaired within the port. No wonder, then, in
view of all that has been quoted, and may reason-
ably be inferred, that the same correspondent
notes that, while a concentration in the north
might be wisest from a purely military point of
view, " it is commonly rumored in Tokio that
the naval authorities advocate the reduction of
Port Arthur at the earliest possible moment,
and without any reference to developments north-
ward of the peninsula. . . . After October the

104 Naval Administration and Warfare

northern parts of the Sea of Japan pass under
the protection of winter." Whatever criticisms
may justly be passed on the details of Russian
management, the Japanese themselves thus testify
to the correctness of the decision to retain the port.
It is to be hoped that the evidence of the value
of commerce destroying, given by the Vladivostok
squadron, as a hostile measure most important,
though secondary, may receive timely recognition
before the great naval states are induced hastily
to sign away any part of their control over the com-
munications of the world, on an ill-considered
idea that private property, so called, is more en-
titled to immunity than is human life in the persons
of their citizens. After all, the life of a warrior is
as really a private life as the goods of the trader
are private property; and is no less entitled to
respect because risked for the public welfare, in-
stead of for individual gain. The whole subject
has been regarded, in my opinion, in the false Ught
of a supposed humanitarianism, rather than from
the true point of view of its weight as an un-
questionably effective belligerent measure. The
question is not, as commonly posed, whether in-
dividual property in transit for commercial pur-
poses is private, in the same sense as a man's house,
or clothes, or furniture. Even so, the two kinds
differ essentially, regarded as contributory to

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 105

national military power, which is the point at issue.
Accurately stated, the question runs thus: Is the
suppression of an enemy's external commerce
a means powerfully conducive to exhausting his
strength, and so shortening the war ? If so —
and the answer can be little doubtful — the query
follows. Is it not then perfectly proper to forbid
it, and to punish, by forfeiture of goods involved,
belligerent citizens who disregard the prohibition,
exactly as the neutral who disregards a blockade
is punished by confiscation of vessel and cargo ?
I admit that, logically, the neutral who carries the
belligerent goods which the belligerent no longer
can, also violates the lawful command of the
other party to the war; and so Charles James
Fox, an eminent and most liberal authority, said
that " Free ships, free goods," was neither good
law nor good sense. The principle, hovv^ever,
has been adopted by consent of the great naval
states; but the making of one mistaken concession
is no reason for another. The true standard of
civilized warfare is the least injury consistent
with the end in view; but the end should not be
lost to sight in glittering generalities. Russia
herself may now see cause to regret that she thus
lost sight of, or could not anticipate, what in an
hour of need would be the result of her ancient
zeal, and consequent treaties, which now deny her

106 Naval Administration and Warfare

the old belligerent right to capture enemies' goods
in neutral ships.

It is yet to appear whether the Russian retention
of Port Arthur will prove as distinctive and deter-
minative a factor in the general campaign as Lady-
smith did in the Transvaal. In the present war,
there is not between the opponents the same dis-
parity of ultimate strength as in the earlier; and
the approach to equality is still closer because of
the evident great superiority in organization of
the one weaker in material power, which possesses
also the immense advantage of nearness to the
scene, with consequent shortness and facility of
communications. Yet, while the final outcome —
the result, — to which the parties are working,
remains unknown while these words are writing,
the process which we are watching tends more and
more to confirm the forecast that the tenure of
the port may prove, and still more might have
proved, the turning-point of final success for the
one which lost the first and very important moves
of the game, through being inexcusably unpre-
pared, and still more inexcusably oflF her guard, at
a most perilous moment. Port Arthur has meant,
and still means, delay, the great need of all defence,
but especially of that particular defensive which
requires time to organize resources incontestably
superior. Whether it avails finally has yet to be

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 107

shown in the result; but in the process its influence
is steadily visible, with a clearness to which even
success can scarcely add demonstration. It im-
posed upon the Japanese at once two objectives;
two points of the utmost importance, between
which they must choose, whether to concentrate
upon one or divide between the two; and at a
moment of general numerical inferiority, it re-
tained, in the fortifications of the place, a passive
strength, which is always equivalent to a certain
number of men; the number, namely, by which
besiegers must always outnumber the besieged.
These divergent objects were Port Arthur and the
discomfiture of the northern Russian army, nec-
essary to assure the Japanese the control of Korea
and the release of Manchuria, the professed
motives of the war.

That the Japanese leaders realized and gravely
appreciated the dilemma may be confidently in-
ferred from their action, immediately after their
first prompt and judicious steps had secured for
them the control of the sea, in degree sufficient
for military transportation. The frequent des-
perate attempts to seal the mouth of the harbor
were meant in effect to destroy the military value
of the place; for it has none other than that of
a seaport containing an effective squadron. Closed
to ingress or egress, there would have remained

108 Naval Administration and Warfare

for the Japanese army but one position to assume;
that is, a concentration between the two hostile
corps. Having failed in their efforts, and unable
decisively to injure the Russian fleet as an efficient
entity, the port remains essentially untouched. It
either must be taken, or, if neglected, remains a
naval potentiality, of evil omen to their cause. It
can be neutralized only by a naval blockade, a
temporary measure, which accident, or weather, or
some fortuitous unexpected disaster — such as the
sinking of the Haisuse — may cripple or remove.
Doubt, amounting to derision, has been expressed
as to the Baltic fleet going to the Far East. I have
been myself too far away from sources of informa-
tion to know how far it was possible for that fleet
to start, or in what force; but I have always be-
lieved that, if properly equipped to start, it was
perfectly feasible for it — so far as coaling was
involved — to proceed to the scene during the
summer weather, and this season has been pecul-
iarly propitious. Had it so done, and the Port
Arthur fleet been as far restored as it has given
demonstration of being, its enemy would have
found on the sea, as on land, two divergent ob-
jects, two mobile opponents, unitedly very superior
to himself, co-operation between which, or even
junction, would have been difficult to prevent.
These various possibilities, some of which have

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 109

been realized already in the sequel, were to my
mind ample justification for the Russian deter-
mination to hold the place, quite apart from the
secondary, but not therefore unimportant, consid-
erations of general policy. Of more interest than
my personal opinion, however, is the divergence
of views witnessed in military observers; some
condemning the Russian course, while others
find fault with the Japanese for being by it lured to
a division of their forces, which apparently is
making itself felt in a certain dilatoriness in
pushing their otherwise very correct strategic
dispositions and movements, in the advance
toward Liao-Yang, or Mukden — whichever be
their ultimate goal. This dilatoriness, which
begins to affect the tone of critics hitherto favor-
able even to the verge of partiality, may be the
result of caution, due or undue; or it may reflect
an actual deficiency of strength, attributable to the
corps detached for the siege of Port Arthur. The
army confronting Kuropatkin is evidently nu-
merically superior to his; but is this superiority as
great as is needed to carry on the flanking move-
ments, and the assaults upon the successive posi-
tions, presumably well selected and reasonably
strengthened, which it is the privilege of a well-
conducted defence to oppose to the advance of
heavier numbers .? To outflank means to overlap,

110 Naval Administration and Warfare

so threatening doubly, from front and side, the
flank involved, and by its defeat or disorder men-
acing the rear of the army and its communications.
To effect this, however, requires largely superior
numbers, or else a weakening of some other part
of the line attempting it; thereby offering the
enemy an opportunity for a severe counter-stroke,
as was the case at Austerlitz.

Despite the difficulty of following the reported
movements, owing to the confusion of names, it
seems clear that the Japanese from the first have
been continuously massing and extending beyond
Kuropatkin's left (east) flank; and his recent
incidental mention of their apparent intention
to operate along the right (north) bank of the
Tai-tse-ho, which runs westward through Liao-
Yang, indicates distinctly a purpose to crush that
flank, and thereby either intercept his retreat, or
throw him westward, off the railroad which is his
main line of communication. Success in either
would mean to the Russians utter material dis-
aster, irrespective of moral effect; but that a
scheme so well conceived should be executed
with so little apparent impetuosity inevitably
elicits comment. Is there here traceable just that
inadequate superiority which means caution rather
than vigor of attack .? And is this attributable
to the Port Arthur siege ? Data for positive reply

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 111

are wanting ; but, as before remarked, the transfer
of both the opposing forces at the port to their
respective main bodies would redound much more
to the advantage of the Japanese than of the Rus-
sians, and in every event the influence of the port
upon the course of the campaign is conspicuous.
Nor can the final result, whichever way it turn,
impair the significance of this renewed illustration
of the determining efi^ect of well-placed fortresses
upon military operations — and upon naval also.
And here I may well quote an incidental, but very
significant, expression from the Times corre-
spondent already quoted, whose letter had not
been published when I was writing hitherto : " The
Japanese undoubtedly intended to send forward
the correspondents, and undoubtedly expected
that the military situation would speedily enable
them to do so. But events did not shape them-
selves to order, and every one has been disap-
pointed."

On the naval side, the tenure of the fortress not
only has constrained the presence before it of the
main Japanese navy, which is the strategic effect,
but also has afforded in some measure lessons,
tactical in character, as to the probable dispositions
and operations of blockading and blockaded fleets
under modern conditions. The most important
and decisive novel factor is the torpedo, and es-

112 Naval Administration and Warfare

pecially the automobile torpedo, which it is
scarcely too much to say now makes its first ap-
pearance in actual war. The distinguishing
feature of the torpedo of course is that it directs
its attack against the ship's bottom. This is the
part most difficult to reach; but, like the heel of
Achilles, it is likewise the least protected, and
therefore both most vulnerable and most fatal,
if attained. The stationary torpedo, more accu-
rately styled a submarine mine, is deadly, if
struck, as was shown full forty years ago, in the
American War of Secession, by several appalling
disasters; but under ordinary conditions it could
be avoided, and at all events it did not entail
the same continual anticipation of a stab in the
dark, from behind, nor the sustained anxiety,
necessarily occasioned by the automobile, capable
of projection from a long distance. The moral
strain, and consequent physical exhaustion, as
well as the material danger, from this cause has
been recognized to be among the very disturbing
factors in future attempted blockades; and the
question how best to deal with such a condition
has weighed heavily upon the naval mind.

No solution can be said to have received uni-
versal acceptance. In default of experience it
was plausible to argue, a priori, and upon gen-
eral principles, that whatever may be said of

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 113

torpedoes launched from one battleship against
another, which is a separate problem, the attack
by torpedo vessels upon a blockading fleet is
simply a particular form of the general question
of surprises, and must be met by precautions anal-
ogous to those used by all great armed masses,
which cover their front and flanks with a system
of advanced detachments, diminishing in numerical
strength until the outermost of all, called the picket
line, is reached. By these means is ensured, to a
greater or less degree, that timely alarm will be
given, and also a certain amount of resistance
opposed, all tending to prolong the period during
which the main body will be preparing to meet the
attack, thus reduced from a surprise to the normal
conditions of warfare. This is the simply defensive
resource by which an investing body, military or
naval, protects itself against attack unawares from
within or without, whether by sortie in force, or
by some special enterprise on a minor scale in-
tended to inflict a particular injury; such as dis-
abling a battery approaching completion, inter-
cepting a train of supplies, etc. The ofi^ensive
purpose, whether it be siege or blockade, demands
further dispositions; but, whatever these may be,
there is always necessity to guard against offensive
returns, by surprise, from the opponent within.
It appears to me, from the numerous though

114 Naval Administration and Warfare

often very brief and partial accounts which reach
us, that Admiral Togo's measures have reflected
these conditions. Since the discontinuance of
the bombardments by the fleet, and of the efforts
to close the harbor's mouth, the conspicuous
feature of the naval operations, as reported, has
been the recurrent encounters between small ves-
sels, singly or in groups. These have been mainly
of the torpedo class, or unarmored cruisers, evi-
dently engaged in outpost work, for which their
size particularly designates them. The Japanese
battle fleet has presumably maintained a position
where its commander believed that, under all
ordinary circumstances, by its system of lookouts,
it would receive timely notice of an attempt on the
part of the enemy to come out in force. In offensive
purpose we know that on more than one occasion,
conspicuously on June 23, these precautions were
adequate, for the fleet came up in accordance with
signals ; while on the defensive side we also know
that no successful attack has been made by a
torpedo vessel on the Japanese main blockading
fleet, the Hatsuse having been sunk by a station-
ary mine. I have been told, by a person in a posi-
tion to speak with assurance, that the inactivity
of the Russians, with the very respectable torpedo
flotilla at their command, is attributed in part
to the personal characteristics of their naval

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 1 15

commander-in-chief; to his excess of caution or
lack of enterprise. To this correspond expres-
sions attributed by a correspondent of the Times
(June 1 8) to Captain Arima, the Japanese naval
officer who commanded in the first two attempts
to block the entrance. " The one thing essential
to Russia above all others was to prevent Japan
from securing undisturbed use of the waterways
to the continental seat of war. It was for her to
assume and to hold the offensive. Her passivity
has been astonishing. It may be doubted whether
she yet knows where the Japanese have their naval
base. When Makaroff had reorganized his fleet, we
expected to find his destroyers and torpedo boats
scouting through an arc of a hundred miles
radius. We expected to find him taking active
steps to discover what route our vessels habitually
followed in approaching Port Arthur. Even if,
having tracked us to our base, he found it in un-
surveyed waters, knowledge of our course must
have afforded him many opportunities. But he
did nothing. His vessels lay tamely awaiting our
attacks."

If these criticisms be just, — and it is not easy
to contest them, — they qualify by so far the natu-
ral inference from the present operations; which,
with that exception, have been confirmatory of the
opinion, already held by some, that torpedo vessels

116 Naval Administration and Warfare

would find it exceedingly difficult to get within
range — at night even within sight — of a hostile
battle fleet, well picketed by lookouts close in with
the harbor mouth, and itself occupying a position
unknown to the would-be assailants. Judging
from reports at this moment of writing (August
13), the annual manoeuvre period of the British
fleet points to the same conclusion. There is also a
statement, made upon good authority, that in one
of the sorties of the Vladivostok squadron, it was
sighted by Kamimura's division and kept in view
till nightfall, the pursuing torpedo vessels reaching
within two or three miles; but upon the Russian
lights being extinguished all trace was lost. Like-
wise it is familiar to students of naval history that
a chased vessel, the exact position of which at dusk
was visible, frequently escaped by the simple
trick of showing no lights, or false lights, and
changing her course. This expedient was effective
even against intent eyes looking towards a point
already discerned, and from a comparatively lofty
deck. Owing to the lowness of torpedo craft, vision
is much more restricted in range; and through
their unsteadiness, it is more difficult to retain.

That " frigates are eyes of the fleet " is a saying
probably older than Nelson, by whom it is known
to have been adopted. In his day, however, the
eyes were almost wholly for offensive purposes;

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 117

to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy, in
order to guide one's own movements of attack. The
ancient line-of-battle ships were not Hable to sur-
prise, in the strict sense of the word, although
the unexpected doubtless often occurred. Now,
however, the seaman is reduced to the full level
of the exposure which in this respect has long
dogged the soldier, and the eyes of Argus scarcely
would exceed the demand for defensive outlook.
If the unusually smooth weather, which has
marked the recent British manoeuvres, enlarged
in consequence the range of action and effect of the
submarine, as is thought, it suggests also that
many steamboats of the outside fleet, not capable
of meeting heavy seas, could be utilized for de-
fence in such circumstances.

It will remain a question for some time how near
a harbor's mouth a blockading battle-force will
venture to lie. If its object be merely to support
a commercial blockade, maintained chiefly by
lighter and swifter cruisers, this end may be se-
cured without very close approach; but, if charged
with preventing the escape of a division within,
distance will be a matter of importance. The latter
has been the condition of Admiral Togo's block-
ade, and the escape of the Russians, to which
every motive should prompt them, has so far been
thwarted. We do not know what his proceeding

118 Naval Administration and Warfare

has been, but we do know that his battle fleet
is frequently out of sight; and yet, on the un-
expected appearance of the enemy with his re-
paired ships, on June 23, Togo was promptly on
hand. Under the particular conditions of Port
Arthur, which made the issue of a fleet onerous
and protracted, the vessels having to come out one
by one, ample time is allowed for conveying
warning to a distance. The difficulty would be
far greater where egress was easy, and could be
effected independently of tide conditions. Under
such circumstances, to sustain its offensive role, the
outside battle fleet must take a position which will
greatly increase its danger, and impose further
strain upon its defensive powers. By day the
range of modern ordnance, and by both night
and day the establishment of outside mine fields
to the extreme limit of the belligerent's waters,
suffice to prevent very close approach by ar-
mored vessels, the draft of which is unavoidably
heavy. These factors, however, are stationary,
and can readily be allowed for. It is, as always,
the mobile foes, in this case the division wishing
to escape, the enemy's defensive body, with the
torpedo flotilla as its off"ensive covering arm,
which constitute the diflSculty. The problem is
probably no more troublesome, nor more unequal
between the two contestants, than those which our

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 119

predecessors encountered; but the particular
danger of unexpected sudden assault, directed
at a peculiarly vital spot, by assailants not readily
visible, is nevr, and we have not yet the experi-
mental data necessary for even an approximate
answer as to its degree, or as to the facility of
counteraction. One thing we know; risks must
be run by those who would make war. Admiral
Sampson well said in one of his general orders,
the escape of the Spanish squadron is so serious
a matter that the risk of the torpedo must be
accepted.

Yet how far may not such a sound general
maxim be qualified by conditions of political
urgency, or of ultimate military success, as con-
trasted with immediate victory. There is such a
thing as the " sterile glory " of fighting battles, and
still more of running risks, the object of which is
not worth the possible loss. The best victories,
said Tourville, are those which cost least in blood,
hemp, and iron. It has been noted of Nelson,
truly, I think, that he was more cautious about
his top-gallant masts in bad weather than about
his whole fleet in battle. It has seemed to me all
along very much of a question whether Admiral
Togo would be well advised to court action with
his battleships, provided he could prevent the
enemy's escape without it. It would be better

120 Naval Administratiofi and Warfare

to throw the weight of the destruction of the
enemy's squadron upon his torpedo vessels and
upon the army. His conditions are not those of
Sampson, though even in that case obvious poHt-
ical considerations precluded all needless hazard
of battleships. Japan has abundance of men,
but she has not superabundance of ships. For an
adequate object she can afford to risk much, and
under some conditions must risk everything, if
necessary ; but, after all, the winning of victories
is worth while only to the one supreme decisive
object of her naval operations — the control of
the sea ; and if that can be attained equally well
by other means, the battle fleet should be pre-
served as both a political and military factor of
the first importance. There did not seem to me
eagerness to engage in his operations of June 23 ;
although here again information, still imperfect,
prevents positiveness of judgment. Opinion con-
cerning his motives must repose rather upon
apparent expediency, conjoined with such indica-
tions as the reports contain. Again, what force has
he had recently before Port Arthur ? Has he not
drawn thither the greater part of the armored
cruisers which once appeared to be with Kami-
mura before Vladivostok ? This measure, if rec-
ognized by the Russians, would deter them from
desperate attempts to leave, and, should they try

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 121

it, would ensure comparative immunity for his
own fleet by an overwhelming superiority of
force, thus shortening the time of engagement,
and lessening, as well as distributing, the amount
of injury which the enemy could effect. It would
account also for the apparent inefficiency of the
Japanese Vladivostok squadron, which has so
far failed to bring to book the audacious enemy
within.

After writing these words, rummaging through
some cuttings relative to the war, which I had
put aside, I turned out, among other things,
the report of Captain Arima's remarks, before
forgotten, from which I have already introduced
one quotation. He further confirms, and was
doubtless in a position to speak knowingly, that
the necessity for care of the battleships was clearly
recognized, and was a dominant motive in Japan-
ese councils:

" Our general strategy has been largely guided
by the consideration that our navy is not elastic.
Whatever resources we take into the fight must
suffice us until the finish. Our first thought,
therefore, was to expose our squadrons to a mini-
mum of danger, so long as their destructive po-
tency was not thereby impaired. We have not
courted conflicts at close ranges. We have avoided
them, preferring to utilize to the full the immense

122 Naval Administration and War jar e

potentialities of modern cannon. Hence our fre-
quent employment of high angle fire, which it is
not our experience is specially severe on a gun.
Besides, we have no lack of guns. . . . Our
attempts to seal Port Arthur were inspired pri-
marily by these same economical considerations.
Whatever we could do to paralyze the enemy's
squadron without hurting our own ships, that
we had to do."

The reasoning, I think, is conclusive, and justi-
fies Arima's further remark:

" The same considerations that dictated for us
a programme as economical as possible should
have impelled our enemy to assume the offensive
with all the destructive force he could command.
Russia had reserves to draw on; and she has
building yards on an incomparably larger scale
than those of Japan. The loss of a few ships
could not have mattered for her, could she have
crippled or destroyed an equal number of Jap-
anese vessels. With regard to MakarofF's strategy,
and the Russian naval strategy in general, it
appears to us that they have erred seriously
throughout."

In these words I infer a very evident reference
to the Baltic fleet; for in Far Eastern waters Russia
certainly had neither original equality, nor re-
serves, nor dockyard capacity to vie with Japan.

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 123

Apparently, Japanese naval authorities reckoned
the coming of a Baltic squadron as among very
possible contingencies. The nautical difficulties
of every kind confronting it were in no wise
insuperable; in fact, wrere very moderate; and its
failure to appear can be attributed only to a very
serious lack of appreciation of naval conditions,
or to the general unpreparedness vphich made a
timely start impracticable. The process of re-
pairing, which finally on June 23 enabled the
Russian fleet to put into line the two battleships,
Cesarevitch and Retvizan, would have justified
Makaroff in delaying action until he could bring
his whole force against an enemy so decidedly
superior; but that accomplished, — and its period
would be known antecedently at St. Petersburg,
— the despatch of the Baltic fleet, coincident in
purpose, if not in time, with a determined attack
upon the Japanese fleet by the Port Arthur division,
would be a combination not only feasible but
highly promising of decisive effect. Port Arthur
has held out to a time apparently far exceeding
Japanese anticipations at the date (May 14)
when Arima uttered the words reported; for,
speaking of certain attempts that might be made by
the Russian fleet within, he concluded his remarks
by saying, " We believe that, unless our estimate
of our army be erroneous, there will not remain to

124 Naval Administration and Warfare

Port Arthur much time for such enterprises."
The garrison has endured beyond the expectation
of many ; but where is the relieving force ?

This article was begun, and mostly written,
before the sortie of the Russian fleet from Port
Arthur, August lo; but it has been concluded —
and revised — under the full impression produced
by its failure. Precision of details as to what
actually occurred, of the successive stages of the
combat which led up to the final result, are still
wanting; but the material outcome is sufficiently
evident for all practical purposes, for forming a
workable estimate of the situation as it now is, and
of the probabilities of the immediate future. As
the matter of the engagement of August lo now
(August 19) stands, there could scarcely be asked
an apter illustration of that aspect of the subject
of warfare — and of all practical action — upon
which I dwelt at the beginning. There can be
little doubt that when the details are known, and
have been collated, studied, and weighed, by men
of special aptitudes, there will be found much that
will throw needed experimental light upon the
conditions of modern warfare, and much room
for criticism, favorable or adverse, upon the
conduct of the respective fleets. But important
as all this is in its place and time, and conducive
as it may prove, when well digested, to the formu-

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 125

lation of professional opinion upon questions
still in dispute, it is not immediately imperative;
nay, it is necessarily a matter of time and delibera-
tion. Those who have tried to balance opposing
statements of eye-witnesses, to reconcile official
reports, to supplement defective testimony, know
how troublesome it is to reconstruct the course
of a naval battle. At present the one feature which
engages my own attention, standing out from
the fog of unexplained details, is the apparent
continued care of Togo to preserve his battleships.
It is incredible that after the experience of June 23
he should not have been in superior force, and
certainly he had the best of the fighting; his fleet
remains on the field, and his enemy dispersed.
But why did he not push home his advantage ?
Why was the Cesarevitch permitted to escape, and
the other battleships to return ? He can scarcely
expect, if the place falls, that they will be given
up "alive;" or have felt about battering them,
as Nelson about using shell against an enemy,
that it would be burning " our own " ships. To
surmise that there may remain more life in the
place than appears may cover me with confusion,
ere the words appear in print; but under the most
natural conclusion, that Japan does not feel even
yet that she has any margin of sea power to spare,
what a comment on Russian naval management,

126 Naval Administration and Warfare

and what a justification of the tenure of Port
Arthur, and the consequent harassment of the
enemy's httle navy !

This battle in fact is part of the process, of the
method, of the detail, appertaining to the drama
of war passing before our eyes; and it is not so
much the particulars of its own action which is
important, but the part which it itself, as a whole,
bears to the final result. Due consideration of
this part demands reference not only to that which
is to come, intervening between the present and
the anticipated future, but also to the irrecoverable
past. Properly to value it, we should work back-
ward as well as forward, and regard the broad
aspect of the general contest not only with eyes
enlightened by recognition of fundamental prin-
ciples of war, but also with attention undistracted
by multiplication of irrelevant detail. Whatever
the cause, and wherever the fault, Russia, though
much the greater in ultimate resources, permitted
herself to drift into war unprepared, and gravely
inferior in force upon the decisive scene of con-
flict. This was especially the case upon the sea;
the control of which was, and has continued, so
absolutely essential to Japan, that apart from it
she would be helpless for the offensive action she
had to take.

Under these circumstances two things were nee-

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 127

essary to Russia — delay, in order to gather her
resources, and promptitude in repairing the neglect
of the past. Herein appears the importance of Port
Arthur in the past; it has obtained delay. The
time occupied in the siege has been ample for a
government, which recognized that the whole Jap-
anese movement turned upon the control of the sea,
to have despatched a fleet that by this time could
have reached the scene, and very well might have
turned the scale — allowing only for the fortune of
war. Before this writing, the aggregate of Russian
naval force in the East might have been made very
decidedly superior to that of Japan; and the prob-
lem of bringing the separated sections into co-
operation against a concentrated enemy, though
difficult, would be by no means hopeless. Success
would have ended the war.

The Japanese, having this danger staring them
in the face, have, I think, seen it more clearly
than many of their critics. As shown by the course
of the war, by their action, they have recognized
that Port Arthur was the key, not only to the naval
war but to the whole campaign, land and sea.
It would have been to them an immeasurable
calamity had the naval season, already approach-
ing its close, ended with Port Arthur in the hands
of the enemy. Amid all the uncertainty in which
we are as to the respective numbers of the oppos-

128 Naval Administration and Warfare

ing armies, one thing seems clear, — that Kuro-
patkin up to the present has profited, and con-
tinues to profit, by the siege of Port Arthur; and
that to a degree which still renders inconclusive
the whole Japanese movement against him.
They gain ground, undoubtedly; but the Russian
army continually escapes them. It is not to be
believed that leaders with the high order of military
intelligence shown by them would permit this
had they the power to prevent it. Each successful
retreat leaves the Russian army still an organized
force, still "in being;" draws it nearer to its
resources, and lengthens its enemy's communica-
tions. A naval base is an element of sea-power.
It may be no less determinative of a naval issue
than the fleet itself, because it is essential to its
existence. The tenure of Port Arthur, equally
with the control of the Far Eastern waters, has
contributed to the demonstration of the influence
of sea-power. It has modified the whole rfenor
of the land operations, and who shall say that even
the delay so far procured may not sensibly aflPect
the outcome of the war, even though the place
itself shortly fall ? The defence of Port Arthur
must not be looked upon as an isolated considera-
tion dependent upon its particular merits, but as
part of a general plan of operations. Every day it
holds out is a gain ; not perhaps for itself but for

Principles Involved in Japan-Russia War 129

Russia. No principle of warfare is more funda-
mental than that no one position stands, or falls,
for itself alone, but for the general good. The ques-
tion is not, Can Kuropatkin bring the Japanese to
a stand as yet .? Probably he cannot, if the besieg-
ing force is released. It is, Can he continue a suc-
cessful retreat, until the season brings theoperations
to a close ? " Though our military position was im-
posing," wrote Bonaparte to the Directory in 1797,
" it must not be thought that we had everything
in our hands. Had the enemy awaited me, I should
have beaten him; but had he continued to fall
back, continually augmenting his resources, the
situation might have become embarrassing."
Whether Port Arthur has, or has not, obtained for
Kuropatkin all the time needed to organize a
campaign of this character, remains to be seen;
but I think the verdict of history must be that such
was the tendency of its resistance, and that failure,
if it- comes, must be attributed to insufficiency
of means, not to error in strategic conception.
The time it has held out justifies the risk taken
in the original calculation.

Lake Lucerne, August 19, 1904.

RETROSPECT UPON THE WAR

BETWEEN JAPAN AND

RUSSIA

RETROSPECT UPON THE WAR BE-
TWEEN JAPAN AND RUSSIA

March, 1906

MEASURED by the external and obvious
incidents of its progress, time certainly
flies in these days. Momentous events come
swiftly into view, shoot rapidly by, and with equal
speed disappear into the past, crowded out of
sight and mind by the successors which tread upon
their heels. Nor is this due only to the immediate-
ness with which intelligence is transmitted to the
four quarters of the globe. The facility of physical
movement, and for the communication of facts
and interchange of thought, between persons or
nations co-operating to a common end, the be-
quests to us of the last century, have accentuated
perceptibly the pace of mankind, the making of
history. The still recent war between Japan and
Russia is a conspicuous instance. Not merely
the first thunderbolt blow of Admiral Togo upon
the Russian fleet exposed before Port Arthur, but
the final maturing of the quarrel, and the progress

133

134 Naval Administration and Warfare

of the war itself, were marked by a quick decisive-
ness unattainable under similar conditions a
century ago. Among similar conditions I include,
of course, the capacity of the leaders, as well as
the circumstances under which they are called
to act; the difference between a Napoleon and
lesser men would be as great to-day as it was in
his own time, and likewise as great under one
set of external conditions as under another.
Again, when the fighting in Manchuria had reached
what proved to be its end, the peace itself, owing
to the ease with which the plenipotentiaries and
their governments could exchange ideas and mes-
sages, was concluded with a suddenness which
took by surprise a doubting world ; while no sooner
is the war over than it is forgotten in public inter-
est. Here and there a professional writer gives
forth his views, to which some brief comment
is accorded; but that the war itself, and its lessons,
have ceased to engage general attention, is at-
tested alike by the columns of journals and the
lists of articles in the reviews.

Underlying the external and obvious character-
istics, that thus pass out of sight and mind, there
are in every period factors more permanent in
operation and longer in development, which for
these reasons demand closer scrutiny and more
sustained attention. For instance, the recent

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 135

elections (1906) in Great Britain have probably
corresponded in kind, in general outcome, to
general expectation, as did also the issue of the
war between Japan and Russia; but in degree
each has taken the world — at least the outside
world — by surprise. The events are obvious;
but, in the one case as in the other, what account
is to be given ? Does the magnitude of the imme-
diate result indicate in either case a final deter-
mination of the current of history, definitive direc-
tions to be henceforth maintained by three mighty
nations ? or is there reason to suppose that, like
a river forced to adapt its course to the country
through which it flows, we see only a mo-
mentary deflection, or a momentary persistence,
beyond which may be discerned already condi-
tions which must substantially change what may
now appear an irreversible decision ? Has the war
itself revolutionized, or seriously modified, ante-
cedent teachings of military and naval history ?

In military matters, so far as they can be sepa-
rated from political, the obvious and external be-
long chiefly to the field of tactics, as distinguished
from strategy. The relative significance of these
two terms may be assumed familiar to the public
through the discussions of the past score of years.
Great battles, great surrenders, the startling mile-
stones of a campaign or a war, remain vividly

136 Naval Administration and Warfare

impressed upon minds that may never have ap-
preciated or suspected the underlying stream of
causes which from time to time emerges in these
conspicuous results. And as such popular recog-
nition is essentially narrow in scope, so the matters
to which it relates are the most narrowly technical,
and consequently those which in fact the general
pubhc can least accurately weigh. A broad out-
come — victory or defeat — is within its compre-
hension ; the fitness or the errors of the militaty
means employed are much less so, except in very
general statement. Politicians, doubtless, find
the same in their campaigns. Great considerations
of policy, appreciation of conditions, especially
those of the future, which correspond to the strate-
gic diagnosis of the warrior, are much less effect-
ive at the moment than some telling phrase, or
suggestion of immediate interest, which can be
quickly fashioned into a campaign cry that hal-
loes down reasonable opposition. Such victories,
however, are fruitless in war or in politics. Unless
the position won is strategically decisive, by its
correspondence to the conditions of the war or
of the nation, the battle might as well, or better,
never have been fought. In military affairs the
choice of action, being in the hands of one man,
may by him be determined, for good or ill, with-
out regard to his followers; and in the analogous

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 137

position of a despotic ruler, if an able man, a for-
tunate solution may be reached independent of
popular will. Happily for those who love freedom,
this case is rare. In popular government the fore-
sight of the statesman must wait upon the con-
version of the people, often extorted only by the
hard logic of experience. The good of national
conviction and support must be purchased at the
expense of national suffering, consequent upon the
slowness with which nations comprehend condi-
tions not at once apparent. Yet in the end it is
the country ahead, not that behind, which will
control the future course of the river.

Justly appreciated, rhilitary affairs are one
side of the politics of a nation, and therefore con-
cern each individual who has an interest in the
government of the state. They form part of a
closely related whole; and, putting aside the
purely professional details, which relate mostly
to the actual clash of arms, — the province of
tactics, — military preparations should be deter-
mined chiefly by those broad political considera-
tions which affect the relations of states one to
another, or of the several parts of the same state
to the common defence. Defence, let it be said
parenthetically to the non-military reader, implies
not merely what shall be done to repel attack, but
what is necessary to do in order that attack may

138 Naval Administration and Warfare

not be attempted, or, if undertaken, may be
resisted elsewhere than at the national frontier,
be that land or sea. From thi s point of view,
which is strictly accurate, defence rnay~BeTfcfiRed-
broadly as provision tor national well^eing by

,__^rftii3ogr^fflf^wr*'*Trwar°3^

or, more correctly, the primary error of Russia,
that by neglect of this provision her statesmen
placed her in such a condition that, upon the out-
break of the recent war, she was forced at once into
a position of pure defence; the scene of which was
her land and sea frontiers, as constituted through
her several measures of acquisition or aggression
during the preceding years of peace.

From what has been said, it will appear that
such considerations as may naturally arise from
the naval point of view, through reflection upon
the still recent war, will divide into two classes:
those that concern the direction of national policies,
and those which affect the construction, armament,
and management of fleets, which, in the last analy-
sis, are simply instruments of national poHcy.
The question, for instance, of the possession,
fortification, and development of Port Arthur, as
a naval station, as was done by Russia, is one of
broad national policy; one upon which every
naval state has to reach decisions in reference to
the ports available for naval purposes, which it

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 139

may control in various quarters of the world;
one also concerning which there obtain, in both
military and naval circles, differences of opinions
that have to be weighed by governments. On the
other hand, the question whether Port Arthur,
developed as it had been by Russia, and under the
other existing conditions, should have been
abandoned at the beginning, as some contend, or
retained and obstinately defended, as it actually
was, is more closely military in scope; although,
belonging as it does to the province of strategy,
the arguments pro and con can be more easily
and quickly apprehended by the non-professional
mind. Conversely, it is open to argument whether
Japan was well advised to attach as much im-
portance as her course of action indicated to the
downfall of the fortress, to its actual capture, as
distinguished from neutralizing its military effect
by a simple corps of observation, sufficient to pre-
vent evacuation by the garrison to reinforce the
Russian field army, or to stop the entrance of
reinforcements or supplies from without, which
might prolong resistance. This question also is
military in character; and strategical, not tactical.
It affects the conduct of the war, and by no means
necessarily the wisdom of the decision of the Rus-
sian government to establish an adequate naval
base at that point. Whatever opinion may be held

140 Naval Administration and Warfare

as to the proper line of action in the particular in-
stance, after war had begun, it is quite conceivable
that a government may be perfectly justified, by
considerations of general policy, in establishing a
military or naval base for the support of one of its
frontiers at some particular point; and yet that, by
conditions of a subsequent moment, the com-
mander-in-chief on the spot, or his superiors at
home, may properly decide that the exigencies of
the immediate situation dictate its abandonment.
These immediate conditions may be imputable as
a fault to either the government or its general ; they
may arise from inadequate preparation by the one
or mistaken management by the other; but they
do not therefore necessarily impeach the wisdom
of the original decision, which rested upon quite
other grounds. It is precisely the same in other
incidents of statesmanship. One administration
may secure a national advantage of far-reaching
importance, which a successor may forfeit by
carelessness in improvement, or by some mis-
managed negotiation; by prolonged neglect, or
by a single mistake. Neither outcome would con-
demn the original measure, which rests on its
own merits; recognizing the possibilities, and
presupposing — quite legitimately — a consistent
furtherance of the steps first taken.

Such considerations are so obvious that the

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 141

statement of them at length may probably seem
tedious. Yet I am confident that it is the failure
thus explicitly to analyze to oneself the several
lights in which a complex problem may be re-
garded, the tendency to view them too exclusively
together, as a composite single result, that leads
to much confusion of thought, with the probable
consequence of erroneous determination. Take,
for instance, the question of the speed of battle-
ships. No one will deny for an instant that, other
things being equal, additional speed — the high-
est — is desirable. This, however, is not the
question. It is the question mixed up with the
assumption that other things are equal, that you
are getting your additional speed for nothing;
or, to express it otherwise, there is the momentary
forgetfulness that something else in the way of
efficiency must be sacrificed, and that, when a
certain speed has been attained, a small increment
must be purchased at a very great sacrifice. What
shall the sacrifice be ? Gun power ? Then your
vessel, when she has overtaken her otherwise equal
enemy, will be inferior in offensive power. Ar-
mor ? Then she will be more vulnerable. Some-
thing of the coal she would carry ? But the ex-
penditure of coal in ever increasing ratio is a
vital factor in your cherished speed. If you can
give up none of these things, and it is demon-

142 Naval Administration and Warfare

strable that without some sacrifice you cannot
get the speed, will you then — and this is what
all navies are now doing — increase the size of
the ship ? Yes, you say, by all means. Well,
then, where will you stop ? Or, the same question
in other words, what will you sacrifice in order
to get your greater dimensions ? Will you have
fewer ships; smaller numbers with larger in-
dividual power ? You will sacrifice numbers ?
Then you sacrifice so far that power of com-
bination which is essential to military dispositions,
whether they relate to the distribution of the fleet
in peace, with reference to possible war, or to the
exigencies of the campaign, or to the battlefield.
But, if the final decision be we will have numbers
as well, then the reply is you must sacrifice money;
which, starting from the question of speed, brings
us face to face with one of the great present prob-
lems of national policy among all naval nations,
the size of the budget. For the line of reasoning
which applies to the 18,000 or 20,000 ton ship will
hold good when you have reached 30,000, and
your neighbor " goes one better," by laying down
one of 32,000. No matter how big your ship may
be, a bigger can be built. The skill of the naval
architect and engineer is equal to producing it,
and the open sea at least will be able to float it.
Whether it can enter harbors is another question;

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 143

some at least will be deep enough. But it must
be borne in mind that this progression is endless;
the same problems recur with each increase.
Those who remember the geometry of their boy-
hood will recall that similar triangles remain
similar, be the sides ten feet, or ten yards, or ten
miles. The determining angles remain the same,
and in this matter the above considerations are the
constant angles.

This question of speed, thus developed, may be
illustrated perfectly aptly from that of Port Arthur.
In the case of that port, the question, fully stated,
was not simply, " Is the position in itself one good
for Russia to keep, or for Japan to capture .? "
It was, " Is the place worth the sacrifice which
must be made to hold or to win it ? " If Russia
wished to keep it, she must sacrifice from Kuro-
patkin's too small army some forty or fifty thou-
sand men. If Japan was bent on taking, she must
withdraw from her field army to the siege opera-
tions, from first to last, from seventy-five to one
hundred thousand; and, if she was in a hurry,
she must be prepared for the further sacrifice,
otherwise unnecessary, of many thousands of lives,
in the desperate assaults made to hasten the
end.' It is to be supposed that each party meas-

' The Japanese losses at the siege have been estimated at
59,000. " Journal of the Royal Artillery," October, 1 905,
322.

144 Naval Administration and Warfare

ured adequately the sacrifice either way, and took
the alternative adopted in full view of the cost;
yet it is by no means sure that this was the case.
It is at least very possible that to each Port Arthur
derived its importance from attention fixed upon
it to the exclusion of qualifying considerations;
as may be supposed the case with speed, from the
extravagant demands now made for it in ships,
the chief function of which should be to give and
to take hard knocks, and that not severally, but in
conjunction with others of their like, which we
style a fleet.

The question of Port Arthur, indeed, was one
so important in the general campaign up to the
moment of its fall, and afterwards by the effect
of the delay caused by the siege upon subsequent
operations, that among military critics it has
given rise to very diverse opinions, affecting more
or less the question of national policy in establish-
ing such bases. There is found on the one side
the unqualified assertion of a cardinal mistake
by the Russians in not at once evacuating a posi-
tion which could not be ultimately held, and con-
centrating with Kuropatkin every available sol-
dier. On the other there is an equally sharp criti-
cism by soldiers — not by seamen — of Japan,
for having diverted so many troops from Oyama
as seriously to affect the vigor and conclusiveness

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 145

of his operations, thereby enabhng the enemy con-
tinually to escape. It is clear that the argument
is not wholly one-sided. If the Japanese were
compelled, or induced, it matters little which, to
devote to the siege a number of men who in the
early part of the war might have been used de-
cisively against Kuropatkin's relatively feeble
army, it follows that the leaving the place garri-
soned had an effect favorable to the Russians at a
very critical moment. That the Japanese felt
compelled, and really were compelled, to their
course can scarcely be doubted, unless one views
the land and sea campaigns as wholly separate
operations. For purposes of discussion they may
be so severed, but actually they were one whole;
and ultimate conclusions cannot be accurately
reached without bearing in mind their inter-rela-
tion. It was essential to the Russians to protract
the land campaign, to gain time to develop their
naval strength; it was essential to the Japanese
to destroy the fleet in Port Arthur before such
development, in order to secure the sea communica-
tions upon which their land campaign depended.
To ensure this end it was imperative to gain con-
trol of the port. That the Russians actually
made no adequate use of the chance obtained
for them by its prolonged resistance is nothing to
the purpose. It is difficult to find an adjective

146 Naval Administration and Warfare

fitted to characterize the delays in despatching
the Baltic fleet. The fact remains that they had
their chance through the protraction of the siege.
My own opinion from the first has been, and now
continues, that regarded in itself alone, and with
reference to the land campaign only, the retention
by Russia was correct; and that, had her naval
campaign in its entirety been managed with any-
thing like the ability shown by Kuropatkin, the
event of the war in Manchuria might have been
different. That to naval success a long tenure of
Port Arthur was absolutely essential is too obvious
for comment; but imagine the effect upon nego-
tiations, had the conditions on shore, including
the fall of Port Arthur, been precisely as they were
when peace was signed, but that a timely previous
co-operation between the Port Arthur and Baltic
divisions had left the Russians in sure control of
the sea. That the view here outlined was held
by the Japanese, rightly or wrongly, is clear from
the persistence of Admiral Togo in his attempts
to block the port, and to injure the fleet within
by long range firing; and afterwards from the
sustained vigorous character of the prolonged
siege operations. We now know that in the
Russian naval sorties of June 23 and August
10 the Japanese had but four battleships to the
Russian's six on the spot. Togo, doubtless, could

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 147

not have anticipated so cruel a stroke of fate as
that which, on May 15, 1904, deprived him of two
battleships in one day by submarine mines. Yet,
whatever the value of his fleet in its largest numbers,
it was quite evident that the Russian fleet, " in
being " in Port Arthur, by itself alone constituted
a perpetual menace to the sea communications
of Japan, the absolutely determining factor of the
war; while taken in connection with the Russian
Baltic fleet, still in existence, the possibilities of
fatal disaster to the Japanese depended wholly
upon the skill with which the Russians managed
the naval resources remaining to them after the
first torpedo attack of February 8, and upon the
time they were able to obtain for that object by
the resistance of Port Arthur. Whether that
resistance was protracted as long as it could be
is beyond my competency to say; but it certainly
continued long enough to afford Russia oppor-
tunity to bring into play all her naval means,
if her schemes for imperial defence, in its broadest
sense, had corresponded to the necessities of the
situation.

In fact, on land, Port Arthur bore to this war
much the relationship that Ladysmith did to that
in South Africa. Whether Sir George White
should have retreated towards Durban, to concen-
trate with other British forces to be expected;

148 Naval Administration and Warfare

whether the Boers should have settled down to
a siege protracted by their indolence, as that of
Port Arthur was by the inherent and developed
strength of the position, are questions which will
be differently answered. What admits of little
doubt is that the effect produced upon the Japanese
action in the later instance was the same as that
upon the Boers in the earlier, and with greater
reason; for, while the menace of Port Arthur
was in kind the same as that of Ladysmith, it
was far greater in degree. The characteristics
may be more convincingly illustrated by recalling
the effect of Mantua upon Bonaparte's operations
of 1796. The parallelism is here confined to the
land operations, reserving the very direct influence
of Port Arthur upon naval operations for further
discussion. The entire distance advanced by the
Japanese from Chemulpo to Mukden, and by the
French from Savona to Leoben, where the pre-
liminaries were dictated by Bonaparte, is about
350 miles in each case. Two months after leaving
Savona the French reached Mantua, 120 miles.
There they were delayed eight months, June 4
to February 2, during which period Bonaparte
fought several battles, or rather made several cam-
paigns, to defeat the attempts of the Austrians to
relieve the place ; but he could make no advance,
for he had no disposable force beyond that needed

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 149

for the blockade. The Japanese were more for-
tunate, through their previous preparations and
their full control of the sea. Nevertheless, from
the victory of Liao-Yang, August 30, to the
battle of Mukden, February 24, they advanced but
thirty-five miles. The siege of Port Arthur lasted
from May 27 to January i, seven months; upon
its fall followed a period of preparation, corre-
sponding to that passed by Bonaparte after the
surrender of Mantua in securing his rear against
possible enemies. Then advance in each case
was resumed, with forces thenceforth liberated
from the fear as to their communications, which
was the detaining effect exerted in their several
days by Mantua, Ladysmith, and Port Arthur.

The conduct of the Japanese with relation to
Port Arthur, prior to its surrender, and even to its
serious investment, cannot but exert a salutary in-
fluence upon the celebrated theory of the " fleet
in being," to which has been freely attributed
a determining influence that has always to me
appeared exaggerated. From the argument de-
veloped above, it must appear that I appreciate
vividly the bearing of the fleet in Port Arthur upon
the war. It is not too much to say that, in the
strategic sense, the fleet was the Port, which with-
out it possessed no value and would never have
been fortified nor acquired. The naval possibili-

150 Naval Administration and Warfare

ties involved were the strongest inducement to
the acquisition of the Liao-tung Peninsula; and
the fact that the Japanese main communications
were by sea constitutes the analogy of the position
to Mantua. The signal of Admiral Togo to his
fleet off Tsu-shima may be invoked to show that
the Japanese thus regarded the Port, purely as
harboring the fleet. If the fate of the Empire
depended upon the results of that day, when only
the Baltic division was in face, how much more
serious the situation so long as the Port Arthur
ships remained a valid force, before they had
supinely allowed their throats to be cut like stalled
cattle. Yet, while recognizing by their acts all the
menace of that " fleet in being," the Japanese
did not hesitate to adventure the fortunes of a
war essential to national progress upon an over-
sea expedition, which not only was to make a
passage once for all across a belt of water, but
must there be maintained until a settled peace
restored freedom of transit. Even before knowing
the issue of the first torpedo attack, of February 8,
12,000 troops put to sea to land at Chemulpo, like
the advanced detachment hazarded to seize the
opposite bank of a river, and hold there a position
at which the remainder of the army can disembark.
The instance is the more impressive because of
the immensity of the stake, when it is remembered

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 151

what defeat would have meant to Japan in this
infancy of her progress, economical and pohtical,
in the new world of modern civilization.

It may certainly be replied, and justly, that the
very greatness of the emergency demanded the
hazard, upon the sound principle that desperate
conditions require desperate remedies. It is Hkely
enough that to attempts important, yet secondary,
where the danger incurred by failure exceeds the
advantage to be gained by success, a " fleet in be-
ing " may prove a sufficient deterrent. This was
the case with Louis XIV's projected landing in
England in 1690, which elicited Admiral Tor-
rington's historic phrase, " fleet in being." In
expeditions of similar secondary importance, how-
ever, Great Britain continually adventured bodies
of troops during the Napoleonic wars ; not to men-
tion Wellington's army in the Peninsula, rein-
forcements and supplies to which were certainly
to some extent endangered, and occasionally
molested, by the cruisers or naval divisions of an
inferior enemy. But, after attributing the utmost
effect upon the councils of an enemy produced
by the presence of a " fleet in being," at a point
favorable for acting upon communications, the
fact remains that in this very crucial instance the
Japanese have practically defined its actual
powers. They met the threat to them, not by

152 Naval Administration and Warfare

submitting to inaction until the enemy's fleet
was destroyed, but by doing just what a general
on shore does, when he cannot at once capture
a fortress menacing his line of advance. Port
Arthur was masked by the Japanese fleet, stationed
at a fitting position, and kept informed of the
enemy's movements by a well-developed scouting
system. To these measures for repelling a sortie
in force was committed the safety of the army
to be transported in the rear; and the undoubted
possibilities of occasional, even serious, injury
to a body of transports was accepted, secure that
the " fleet in being," being essentially inferior to
the Japanese navy as a whole, could not perma-
nently interrupt the forward flow which consti-
tutes communications. If, as I have understood
the advocates of the " fleet in being " theory, the
mere existence of a powerful, though inferior, body
of ships should deter an enemy from committing
himself to over-sea operations, the Japanese have
certainly demonstrated a contrary possibility.
Were they therein wrong ? Though successful,
has their success been achieved in defiance of a
clear rule of warfare, or has it rather been in
observance of a well-established practice, with its
necessary precautions ?

The example is the more provocative of inquiry,
and of reconsideration of accepted maxims, in that.

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 153

as a matter of fact, the Japanese sea communica-
tions, though maintained substantially secure,
did not escape harassment, and yet more serious
threat. Here and there a transport, here and
there a merchant vessel, was captured by the
not too excessive activity of the Vladivostok squad-
ron, the operations of which might have been
increased in scope and frequency had the Port
Arthur division, taking its life in its hands, flung
itself desperately upon Togo's fleet, determined
to effect the utmost injury at whatever cost. The
irresolute sortie of August lo produced results
sufficient to show that the consequence of such a
move might be so far to weaken Togo as to com-
pel him to draw upon Kamimura's squadron to
reinforce the watch over Port Arthur; a step
which would by so much facilitate the move-
ment of the Vladivostok ships. Such increase of
activity, with consequent Japanese necessary
precaution, would not only have illustrated further
the pros and cons of the " fleet in being " theory.
It would have thrown desirable light also upon the
question of the influence which the molestation of
commerce, whether by direct capture or by the
paralysis induced by menace and apprehension,
can exert upon the economical conditions of a
state, and through them upon military efficiency.
The contemporary files of papers published in

154 Naval Administration and Warfare

Japan bear witness to the immediate effect pro-
duced; but the danger passed too rapidly to
demonstrate the possible reaction from this dis-
play of the proverbial timidity of capital, whether
invested in shipping or otherwise.

Such result as was open to the Vladivostok
squadron to produce was further limited by the
fact that it was composed of armored cruisers, a
compromise double-faced type of vessel, the ad-
visability of which has long been questioned by
respectable professional opinion, and now more
and more loudly than ever. The decision is one of
national policy, by no means purely of technical
character; the considerations on which it must
turn are perfectly easy of comprehension. If,
instead of being ships built with one eye on fighting
and one on speed, the Vladivostok ships had been
fairly and frankly cruisers, pure and simple, un-
armored, and gunned only so as to meet their
Hke, and if the tonange thus economized had been
devoted to speed and coal endurance, their fitness
for the work of molesting commerce and trans-
portation would have been distinctly increased.
The same aggregate tonnage might have given
two or three additional swift ships of the type
suggested. But the armored cruiser is a fighting
ship, though grievously marred as such by the
lack of the single eye, of unity of design, of Na-

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 155

poleon's " exclusiveness of purpose." Those in
Vladivostok constituted a respectable portion of
the total Russian battle fleet in the far East, and
therefore could not be freely hazarded as ordinary
cruisers might. It is very probable that their pres-
ence in Vladivostok induced the merely tentative
character of the sortie of August lo from Port
Arthur; that the desire to concentrate the whole
fleet dictated an attempt to escape, instead of the
pitched naval battle which the exigencies of the
Russian general situation then demanded.

It is to this, rather than to the effect of a fortified
port upon the navy using it, that I should be in-
clined to ascribe the failure of the Port Arthur
division to improve its opportunities with military
intelligence and energy. Having kept the Jap-
anese at a distance, and obtained for Russia the
opportunity to restore her fleet after the torpedo
attack of February 8, the fortifications can scarcely
be held responsible for the failure to use the ad-
vantage thus gained. There are indications,
however, in a forthcoming book by Captain
Klado, of the Russian Navy, advance sheets of
which I have been permitted to see, that there is
prevalent in high military circles in Russia a
radically erroneous conception of the relations of
a fleet to coast operations, and especially to coast
defence. This conception is held so strongly as

156 Naval Administration and Warfare

to take form in the phrase " fortress-fleet," under
which misguiding title the movement of the fleet
is restricted to the neighborhood of the port, is
made subordinate to the defence of the position,
and to the orders of the fortress commander. By
this school of thought it is considered a positive
calamity, almost a catastrophe, that the fleet
should launch out in wide independent action,
leaving the fortress to its own resources. It de-
mands the dispersion of force, among several for-
tresses, as opposed to concentration in a single
port. Such conclusions are diflficult to under-
stand, especially when we recall the signal histori-
cal example of the siege of Gibraltar, which so
conspicuously illustrated the relative functions
of fleet and fortress. Although these views are
vigorously contested and refuted by Captain
Klado, it would seem probable, from the opinions
in support of them quoted by him, that they may
have dictated the futile and abortive management
of the Port Arthur division; and that this did not
represent the professional judgment of its own
officers, but the burden of a command laid upon
them by higher and non-naval authority. Cer-
tainly Klado's own opinion, formulated and set
down before the final Catastrophe, shows con-
clusively that in intelligent naval circles there
obtained much juster and more comprehensive

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 157

recognition of the part to be played by a fleet, even
regarded from a distinctly defensive standpoint
of national policy. " The only rational defence
of the shores is a strong fleet, and in this case the
chief hope must be placed in it, and not in the
army. The fortress is subsidiary." Incidentally
to the discussion he makes also a remark relative
to the Chinese fleet in 1894, which not only illus-
trates his general argument but may throw light
upon the purposes of the Port Arthur division in
its last sortie of August 10. " In abandoning Port
Arthur the Chinese fleet, under the given circum-
stances, acted quite rightly, since that port was so
situated that it could be taken from the land ; and,
if this had happened, the fleet would have found
itself in an inland roadstead, and would not have
been able to take part in repelling the land attack.
Had it remained in Port Arthur, it would have
been taken alive when the fortress fell. Instead of
this, by going over to Wei-hai-wei, it forced the
Japanese to a most difficult winter expedition in
order to gain this last port. If only the Chinese
had had a fleet capable of vanquishing that of their
enemies, they would have been victorious in the end
despite the sad condition of their army." For
" Chinese " read " Russian," and for " Wei-hai-
wei " " Vladivostok," and we may have in this
comment on the past the explanation of the Rus-

158 Naval Administration and Warfare

sian attempt, as we certainly have a prophecy of
the necessary outcome of the war.

In the general deplorable result, something
must be attributed to the lack of initiative, so
general as to appear almost a national quality,
that was shown in the Russian operations; but
original faults of distribution at least tended to
increase the paralysis which in every direction
characterized their action. By the tenure of two
ports, remote from one another, they in the begin-
ning possessed the advantage which a two-fold
source of danger imposes on an enemy's disposi-
tions. Under most conditions of coast conforma-
tion, two ports, so far separated, would have much
increased the perplexity of Admiral Togo, had
the Baltic fleet been despatched so as to reach
the scene while the defence of Port Arthur was
still hopeful. Even minimized as the difficulty
would have been by the projection of Korea, giving
him at its southern end a central position, well
adapted for moving towards either port, he would
still have been obhged somewhat to uncover Port
Arthur, in order to be on hand to meet Rozhest-
vensky, because ignorant of which destination
he would seek. Such conditions, which were as
evident the first month of the war as they are now,
rightly determined the Japanese to reduce Port
Arthur at the earliest possible moment, and equally

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 159

rightly determined the Russians to hold it. What-
ever may be considered the effect of the place
upon the land operations, it threatened the Jap-
anese communications by sea so long as it held
out effectively, and it kept open to the Baltic fleet
two ports of entry to distract Togo's attention,
and to move him, rightly or wrongly, to divide
his fleet between them. Such considerations, if
valid, afford matter for reflection to all govern-
ments and people, as to the constitution and de-
fence of naval bases in regions where their interests
may induce naval operations. As soon as Port
Arthur fell, the Japanese admiral knew that there
was but one port open to his opponent; that, turn
or twist as he might, there he must at last turn up.
But, while the embarrassment to an enemy of
such a double objective is clear and proverbial,
it is not in itself sufficient, unless improved by
proper dispositions. It is not enough to fortify
the ports. For the offensive purposes which alone
constitute danger to the enemy, they are helpless,
almost as turtles on their backs, unless they con-
tain forces, adequate to issue with intent and power
to inflict injury. The Russians being at the outset
locally inferior in battleship strength, estimating
therein the armored cruisers of both parties, every
ship of that description should have been con-
centrated in one of the two ports; the other

160 Naval Administration and Warfare

should have been utilized for commerce destroy-
ing, and such other desultory operations as are open
to cruisers. Instead of this, the same nonchalance
— essentially consistent with the lack of initiative
already noted — that exposed the vv^hole division,
improperly picketed, before Port Arthur, and left
the Varyag and Korieits a helpless prey at Che-
mulpo, retained also at Vladivostok three powerful
armored cruisers, the proper place of which, being
in the line of battle, was wherever the main fleet
was. It would be interesting to know, if know-
able, how far the appellative " cruiser " was re-
sponsible for this error. This much at least can
be said; that in treating them as cruisers, not as
battle-vessels, the Russian officer responsible was
at least consistent with the original idea of armor-
ing cruisers, the efficiency of which should depend
primarily upon speed and coal endurance, not
upon armour; and to which fighting — except
with equals — is not committed, and should
rarely be indulged. To this same double eye
to two sets of functions, radically distinct, is to
be attributed the undue stress upon extreme
speed for battleships, with the consequent reckless
progress in the size of these vessels. They, by the
accepted spirit of the day, are not only to fight
but also to run; between which two stools a fall
may be looked for.

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 161

That Vladivostok, at least during the open
season, was the proper rendezvous for cruisers is
evident for two reasons. First, being easier to
leave and to enter than Port Arthur, it is so far
favorable to vessels whose mission is evasion ; and,
secondly, it could not be the position for the battle-
fleet, because that, when frozen in, became to the
enemy a fleet non-existent. At this port should
have been the protected — unarmored — cruisers,
which were, on the contrary, congregated at Port
Arthur, and thence accompanied the fleet in its
futile attempt to get away to Vladivostok. From
this centre, itself possessing two exits, and leading
equally to the Japan Sea and to the east coast of
the islands by way of Tsugaru Straits, the field to
commerce destroyers was as clear as conditions
often allow. In the particular kind of vessel
needed for this, the Japanese had largely superior
numbers; but as the mission of the Russian
cruisers would be to escape detection, while that
of the Japanese was to find, it is plain that the
latter needed to be much the more numerous.
Also, as the respective objects, the destruction and
protection of commerce, required that the Rus-
sians should run and the Japanese fight, the
former could act singly while the latter must con-
gregate in squadrons. Uncertainty whether the
enemy were acting severally or in groups would

162 Naval Administration and Warfare

compel concentration to some extent, to avoid
being surprised by a superior force, and so would
decrease the dispersion of the look-outs, while in-
creasing their strength. I will not deny my belief
that, despite all this, in the long run the Russian
cruisers would one by one have been picked up —
that is the necessary penalty of inferior numbers;
but if their design provided both speed and coal
endurance, as it should, the time should have been
protracted sufficiently to demonstrate to some de-
gree what influence such operations may in this
day exert upon the general war-power of a nation,
thus assailed in its financial resources which de-
pend upon the freedom of commerce.

As it is, the indications are clear, though slight.
In the Japan Times of July 23, 1905, it is stated
that up to that time the Vladivostok squadron had
captured only twenty-two Japanese vessels, of
which nine were steamers. Such paucity of results
shows most probably that the armored cruisers
were too valuable to be freely exposed to capture
by Kamimura's superior division, and that their
enterprise was fettered by this consideration,
which would not have applied to unarmored ships
of half their tonnage. The result, such as it is, is
merely direct; and it is the indirect effect upon
commercial movement which most weighs when
the attack is well concerted and vigorous. During

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 163

the cruise of the Vladivostok squadron on the east
coast of Japan, which lasted but little over a week
at the end of July, 1904, although only four
steamers were captured by it, sailings from the
ports of Japan were generally stopped. At a meet-
ing of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, held but two days
before the battle off Tsu-shima, May 27, 1905, the
report stated that in consequence of the Govern-
ment's requisitions for transports the Company's
business had been carried on by hiring foreign
steamers. At the beginning of the war the charter
rate was extremely high, but had lately depre-
ciated owing to the secure retention of the control
of the sea by the navy. This, it will be observed,
was nine months after the Russian naval disasters
of August, 1904, at which time the Port Arthur
and Vladivostok divisions attempted to unite.
The report continued, that in the current fiscal
term the presence of the Russian Baltic fleet in
Far Eastern seas would affect the shipping trade
to some extent, but the Company was determined
to endure to the end. The same paper states that,
a Russian transport having entered Shanghai,
May 26, the local underwriters were refusing to
insure. June 17, it is announced that the steam-
ship services to China and Korea, which had been
suspended by Rozhestvensky's approach, would
now be resumed; and mention is made of the

164 Naval Administration and Warfare

fall of freights in the coastwise coal trade, in con-
sequence of the victory, as well as an easier coal
market.

It appears also that in India even, insurance
on cotton for Japan, which Russia was reported
to have declared contraband, rose threefold upon
a report of Russian cruisers in the Indian Ocean.
Considering the complete control of the sea, in a
military sense, held by the Japanese, and the
lethargy of the Russian naval conduct in general,
the results have a meaning which will be recog-
nized immediately by any one who has had even
casual opportunity to note the effect of apprehen-
sion, and of fluctuations in trade, upon the welfare
of a community, which in turn affects the income
of the state. The significance is increased in the
present instance by the unfavorable situation of
the Russian ports, in point of distance from the
Japanese main lines of sea communication, mili-
tary and commercial. Had control been reversed,
by a Russian naval victory, the Japanese army
in Manchuria would have been isolated; but a
glance at the map will show that Russian communi-
cations by ships to Port Arthur would have been
much more easily molested, through the nearness
of Japanese ports to the waters through which
vessels must pass. As Cuba lies across the ap-
proaches to the Mississippi, and Ireland across

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 165

those to Great Britain, so does Japan to the
communications of Manchuria and Vladivostok
with the outer world.

There seems to be a general professional consent
that the experience of this war has confirmed the
supremacy of the battleship relative to the control
of the sea, which is the great object of naval war-
fare. The torpedo vessel has achieved less than
was expected — at least outside of naval circles
— and what it has accomplished has been almost
exactly that which was anticipated twenty years
ago by naval men. It has come in at the end of the
battle, to complete the disaster of the defeated.
I have not seen attention called to the diffi-
culty experienced by vessels of this class in find-
ing the object of their attack, when once lost
to them in the dark, their own most suitable
moment for action. In measure, of course,
all vessels feel this; but especially these, which
from lying low in the water have a limited hori-
zon, and from their small size and consequent
liveliness have particular trouble in catching
and holding sight of an object. Admiral Togo's
report states that during the night succeeding
the battle his torpedo flotillas were searching
in every direction for their flying enemy, but
with little or no success until 5.20 A. M., when
returning daylight showed smoke. It will doubt-

166 Naval Administration and Warfare

less be found in the future that these vessels,
and submarines, seeking to harass a blockading
fleet, will be gravely hampered by these draw-
backs, when ignorant of the whereabouts of
the enemy's main force; an ignorance easily
imposed by the latter shifting its position after
nightfall. The value of the cruiser class, as
scouts and equipped with modern facilities,
was abundantly established by the certainty
with which Togo, though invisible beforehand,
appeared betimes at each attempted sortie from
Port Arthur; and yet more notably by the in-
formation of Rozhestvensky's appearance when
the Baltic division was still over a hundred miles
distant from his anchorage. He was thus en-
abled not merely to choose his field of action,
and anticipate the enemy there, but to plan his
battle with full knowledge of his opponent's
order; a result facilitated by Rozhestvensky's
failure, or inability, to advance his scouting line
so far as to drive in that of his antagonist, thereby
concealing his own motions and probable in-
tentions. Comparatively little attention has been
given to this singular advantage, although Togo
himself in his report dwells upon it at large,
and with the reiteration of satisfaction. The
possible contribution of cruisers to the ends of
war by endangering an enemy's commerce has

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 167

not received adequate elicitation, owing to the
reasons already mentioned.

But among the most important lessons of this
war — perhaps the most important, as also one
easily understood and which exemplifies a prin-
ciple of warfare of ageless application — is the
inexpediency, the terrible danger, of dividing
the battle-fleet, even in times of peace, into frac-
tions individually smaller than those of a pos-
sible enemy. The Russian divisions at Port
Arthur, at Vladivostok, and in the European
ports of Russia, if united, would in 1904 have
outweighed decisively the navy of Japan, which
moreover could receive no increase during hos-
tilities. It would have been comparatively im-
material, as regards effect upon the local field
of operations, whether the ships were assembled
in the Baltic, in Vladivostok or in Port Arthur.
Present together, the fleet thus constituted could
not have been disregarded by Japan without a
risk transcending beyond comparison that caused
by the Port Arthur division alone, which the
Japanese deliberately put out of court. For,
while they undertook, and successfully carried
out, measures which during a period of four
months disabled it as a body menacing their sea
communications, they none the less before the

168 Naval Administration and Warfare

torpedo attack of February 8 had begun the
movement of their army to the continent. It is
most improbable that they would have dared
the same had the available Russian navy been
united. It vs^ould have mattered nothing that
it was frozen in in Vladivostok. The case of Japan
would not have been better, but worse, for having
utilized the winter to cross her troops to the
mainland, if, when summer came, the enemy
appeared in overwhelming naval force. If Togo,
in face of Rozhestvensky's division alone, could
signal his fleet, " The salvation or the fall of the
Empire depends upon the result of this engage-
ment," how much more serious the situation had
there been with it the Port Arthur ships, which
had handled his vessels somewhat roughly the
preceding August.

To an instructed, thoughtful, naval mind in
the United States, there is no contingency affecting
the country, as interested in the navy, so men-
acing as the fear of popular clamor influencing
an irresolute, or militarily ignorant, adminis-
tration to divide the battle-ship force into two
divisions, the Atlantic and the Pacific. A de-
termined President, instructed in military matters,
doubtless will not yield, but will endeavor by
explanation to appease apprehension and quiet
outcry. Nevertheless, the danger exists; and

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 169

always will exist in proportion as the people do
not understand the simple principle that an
efficient military body depends for its effect in
war — and in peace — less upon its position than
upon its concentrated force. This does not ig-
nore position, and its value. On the contrary, it
is written with a clear immediate recollection of
Napoleon's pregnant saying, " War is a business
of positions." But the great captain, in the
letter in which the phrase occurs, goes on directly
to instruct the marshal to whom he is writing so
to station the divisions of his corps, for purposes
of supply, around a common centre, that they
can unite rapidly; and can meet the enemy in
mass before he can attack any one of them, or
move far from his present position against an-
other important French interest.

Concentration indeed, in last analysis, may be
correctly defined as being itself a choice of position;
viz. : that the various corps, or ships, shall not be
some in one place, and some in others, but all
in one place. We Americans have luckily had an
object lesson, not at our own expense, but at
that of an old friend. There is commonly be-
lieved to have been little effective public opinion
in Russia at the time the war with Japan was at
hand; such as did manifest itself, in the use of
dynamite against officials, seems not to have

170 Naval Administration and Warfare

taken into consideration international relations,
military or other. But in the councils of the Em-
pire, however constituted, and whatever the
weight of the military element, there was shown
in act an absolute disregard of principles so simple,
so obvious, and so continually enforced by pre-
cept and experience, that the fact would be
incomprehensible, had not we all seen, in civil
as in military life, that the soundest principles,
perfectly well known, fail, more frequently
than not, to sustain conduct against preposses-
sion or inclination. That communications dom-
inate strategy, and that the communications of
Japan in a continental war would be by sea,
were clear as daylight. That the whole navy of
Russia, united on the scene, would be sufficient,
and half of it probably insufficient, certainly
hazardous, was equally plain. Yet, ship by ship,
half was assembled in the far East, until Japan
saw that this process of division had been carried
as far as suited her interests and declared war;
after which of course no Russian battle-ship
could go forward alone.

From the military point of view the absurdity
of the procedure is clear; but for national safety
it has to be equally clear to statesmen and to
people. An outside observer, with some little
acquired knowledge of the workings of men's

Retrospect tipon Japan-Russia War 171

minds, needs small imagination to hear the argu-
ments at the Russian council board. " Things
are looking squally in the East," says one; " the
fleet ought to be increased." " Increased," says
another, " you may say so. All the ships we have
ought to be sent, and together, the instant they
can be got ready." " Oh but," rejoins a third,
" consider how exposed our Baltic shores would
be, in case of war against us should be declared by
Great Britain, which already has an under-
standing with Japan." The obvious reply, that,
in case Great Britain did declare war, the only
thing to be done with the Baltic fleet would be
to snuggle it close inside of the guns of Cronstadt,
would probably be made; if it was, it was not
heeded. In a representative government would
doubtless have been heard the further remark,
" The feeling in our coast towns, at seeing no
ship left for their protection, would be so strong,
that I doubt if the party could carry the next
election." Against this there is no provision,
except popular understanding; operative per-
haps in the interior, where there is no occasion
for fright.

The most instructive feature of this Russian
mistake, inexcusable in a government not brow-
beaten by political turmoil, is that it was made
in time of peace, in the face of conditions threat-

172 Naval Administration and Warfare

ening war. In fact, as is often the case, when
war came it was already too late to remedy ade-
quately the blunders or neglects of peace. More
than twenty years ago the present writer had
occasion to quote emphatically the words of a
French author, " Naval Strategy" — naval stra-
tegic considerations — " is as necessary in peace
as in war." In 1904, nearly a decade had elapsed
since Japan had been despoiled of much of her
gains in her war with China. Since then Russia
had been pursuing a course of steady aggression,
in furtherance of her own aims, and contrary to
what Japan considered her " vital interests and
national honor." It is not necessary to pronounce
between the views of the two parties to see that
the action of Russia was militarily preposterous,
unless her fleet grew in proportion to that of
Japan, and of her own purposes, and was kept
in hand; that is, kept concentrated. It would
have mattered little whether, being united, the
outbreak of war found it in the Baltic, or in
Vladivostok. That it could come, as did Ro-
zhestvensky, but in double his force, would have
been a fact no less emphatic when in the Baltic
than in the farther East.

It is precisely the same, in application as well
as in principle, with the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts of the United States. Both are exposed.

^

120

I2S

130 I3S 140

OUTLINE MAP OF SEAT OF WAR IN MANCHURIA.

145

Retrospect upon Japan-Russia War 173

Neither need be more exposed than the other;
for, in virtue of our geographical position rel-
atively to the other great Powers of the world,
it is not the momentary location of the fleet, but
its simple existence, adequate in numbers and efli-
ciency, and concentrated in force, which pro-
tects both coasts. Any invader from the one
side or the other must depend upon sea com-
munications to support his army throughout the
war; not merely for the three months needed to
bring the United States fleet from one side to
the other. But, if the war begin with the fleet
divided between the two oceans, one half may
be overmatched and destroyed, as was that of
Port Arthur; and the second on coming prove
unequal to restore the situation, as befell Ro-
zhestvensky. That is to say. Concentration
protects both coasts. Division exposes both.
It is or vital consequence to the nation of the
United States, that its people, contemplating the
Russo-Japanese naval war, substitute therein, in
their apprehension, Atlantic for Baltic, and Pa-
cific FOR Port Arthur. So they will comprehend
as well as apprehend.

OBJECTS OF THE UNITED STATES
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

OBJECTS OF THE UNITED STATES
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

AN ADDRESS

August, 1888

GENTLEMEN of the Navy: — It has been
the custom, during the very few years in
which the NavalWar College has been in existence,
to begin each session by an opening address, in-
tended mainly to describe the objects and methods
of the institution, concerning which there has been
and still continues a certain amount of misappre-
hension. In the natural course of things, this
custom must at last come to an end with the rea-
son that has occasioned it; but it is perhaps too
much to assume that the need has as yet altogether
passed away for a few words of explanation, par-
taking partly of the character of defence, by
showing the necessity for this undertaking, and
partly of the character of limitations, defining
what is not proposed, as well as what is.

Before entering upon this duty of explanation,
177

178 Naval Administration and Warfare

mention may properly be made of the growing
favor of the College in the mind of the Navy at
large, as testified by the words and actions of many
officers; as well as of certain difficulties and dis-
couragements through which it, in common with
most human enterprises, has had to pass — is still
passing. Last year, as is generally known. Con-
gress refused to make any appropriation for it,
and the work has been pursued during the last
twelvemonth and more under the apprehension
that similar action would be taken in the present
session, and so compel the abandonment of the
work. This fear has happily been removed; and
that it has, is to be ascribed chiefly to the change
of sentiment in the Navy itself, as the objects of
the College have come to be really understood;
as the officers who have attended the course have
gone back to their duties and to their brother
officers with a report which has compelled ap-
proval, and changed an attitude of doubt, or
even opposition, into one of conviction and sup-
port. Such professional opinion cannot but be
felt, however insensible the method of its action.
It will be an evil day for the country when it
ceases to have weight; for such impotence could
proceed only from degeneracy of officers them-
selves, or from an unwillingness on the part of
the outside public to listen to those most com-

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 179

petent to appreciate the wants of the Navy;
both contingencies fatal to the efficiency of the
service.

Besides the doubt as to the action of Congress,
involving the whole question as to whether our
really arduous work would be wholly thrown
away, there have been other drawbacks and
disappointments which, as they affect the course,
must be mentioned. The explanation is due to
those who attend it, that they may understand
why they receive less than m.ight justly be ex-
pected; and it is due to the College that it should
not suffer in reputation from such disappointment,
from a failure to appreciate the obstacles which
have been met, and which could neither be
avoided nor wholly overcome. Chief among
these has been the difficulty in finding officers at
once willing and free to devote their abihties to
the service of the College and to the development
of the course which has to be built up. Few
realize, until they are forced to do so, to what
an extent the brains and energies of the service
are mortgaged in advance by the numerous
activities and specialties that have developed of
late years. In consequence of these, it has been
found that not only are officers otherwise desirable
already employed on other shore duty, but those
actually at sea, and who may be expected to

180 Naval Administration and Warfare

return in one, two, or three years, have engaged
themselves for duty at other stations.

Doubtless the War College will by degrees gather
to itself the small body of instructors which will be
needed, and who will readily seek a duty that I
venture to predict will be found both interesting
and pleasant, as well as most valuable profession-
ally; but as yet it has not had time to do so. The
search of its president has been met with a general
result of " already engaged," and dependence
has had to be upon the voluntary assistance of
officers on other duty who have consented to aid
the College by treating one and another of the
topics that fall within its scope. I cannot too
heartily thank those who have thus, at much
trouble to themselves, undertaken tasks which
could bring no reward, beyond the satisfaction
which good work always carries in itself and the
appreciation of their small audience here. The
assistance thus given has been invaluable, and the
results most important; but it is easy to see that
when other duties have the first claim upon the
attention of the individual, it will not be possible
to realize as much as when the College course
has no rival, and that a man will often find himself
prevented from accomplishing even as much as
he expected. Several instances of such involuntary
and unblamable shortcoming have occurred within

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 181

the past year; and to these was added a mis-
fortune, which at the time of its happening was
wholly unexpected, in the sudden detachment of
Lieut. Bliss ' of the Army. This accomplished
officer, who to very considerable acquirements
added a facility for teaching and a lucidity in
explanation, which, combined with untiring readi-
ness to undertake any amount of labor, made him
an admirable lecturer on Military Science, had
not been quite three years at the College. I was
therefore confident, despite occasional misgivings,
that he would remain through the next term;
and his detachment, wholly without warning,
was a painful surprise. The uncertainty of the
future did not permit an application for an officer
to take his place in time to lecture during the
present session. Finally, it was hoped that this
opening address would have been given either by
the Admiral of the Navy, or by General Sher-
man, both of whom were requested to do so; but
these distinguished officers, who have extended
their cordial approval and sympathy to the
College and its objects, did not feel able to under-
take the task.

Hindrances and disappointments are, however,
only incidents in the infancy and life of any
undertaking, and are from the first destined to

' Now Brigadier-General Tasker H. Bliss.

182 Naval Administration and Warfare

be overcome if the institution has its origin in a
felt necessity, and has been wisely planned. It
remains, therefore, to show that the War College
has sprung from and represents a real need of
the service and the country, and that the general
lines upon which it has so far been conducted are
such as promise to fulfil the actual want, without
duplicating work adequately provided for else-
where in the Navy. In making this explanation
I shall be traversing ground very familiar to
myself, and shall have to use arguments thread-
bare, to me, from frequent use. To some extent
they have appeared in print; but while, on the
one hand, I cannot hope that they have attracted
the attention of all this audience, so, on the other,
the opportunity cannot be foregone of bringing
them before you, now that by coming here you
have put yourselves at the mercy of the speaker.
It will probably clear away embarrassing mis-
apprehensions to state first, to some extent, what
the College does not propose to do. The term
" post-graduate," which has been frequently and
not unnaturally applied, which was indeed used
by the original board that recommended the
establishment of the College, has been unfor-
tunate; suggesting as it does the continuance here,
on a higher and broader scale, of the studies pur-
sued by the graduates of Annapolis while cadets

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 183

at the Academy. If the course here is really
post-graduate, it must be in direct sequence of
the course at the only institution from which all
naval officers are graduated; and the inference
naturally follows that the professors and instructors
there, who have so long and ably directed the
student before graduation, are best fitted to con-
tinue his guidance in the higher developments of
which also they are masters. To this undoubtedly
was due, and not improperly, a certain amount of
opposition that was at one time manifested from
the Naval Academy. It was perfectly true that
at that place were both the men and the plant by
which could best be furthered a strictly " post-
graduate " course, and to carry such elsewhere
was to waste government money, and cast an
undeserved slight upon the well-proved teachers
of an admirable institution.

But if, on the contrary, the line of professional
study proposed here was in no strict sense a
sequence of any one branch, or any number of
branches, followed at Annapolis; if it demanded
neither the specialties nor the appliances to be
found there ; if it were " post " — after — only in
the sense of subsequent time, and not of consecu-
tive development, the objection falls to the ground.
When we pass from the negative explanation of
what the College is not, to the positive statement

184 Naval Administration and Warfare

of what it is, it will, I think, be granted that this
course is " post-graduate " only in the same sense
that the special professional training of a man fol-
lows after and presupposes the instruction of the
home, of the school, and of the college, where
youths having widely different futures pursue for a
time common studies. In a way the term " post-
graduate " has its uses; it is understood, or, what
is much the same thing, people think they under-
stand it; it appeals to the mania for increase of
teaching which pervades our time, and so attracts
support; but it was most unfortunate for the in-
fancy of the War College, when submitted to clear-
headed men more concerned for the honor of their
own alma-mater than to foster a new and pos-
sibly rival institution. " Post-graduate ! a further
development of the Annapolis course ! where
can this be better done than at Annapolis ^. "
The cry went through the service; and if the
premise were conceded, it was difficult to resist
the conclusion.

I pass now to another negative qualification,
in making which considerable care is needed, on
the part of both speaker and hearers, to avoid
misunderstanding. It is important that, in ex-
cluding from the purposes of the College any pro-
fessional interest, there should not be a seeming
disposition to undervalue it. It is to be said,

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 185

then, that the War College does not propose to
devote its energies to the question of the material
and mechanical development of the Navy, except
in a secondary and incidental manner; except,
that is, so far as may be necessary for the further-
ance of its main objects. These objects by them-
selves will require all the time for which officers
can be spared by the Department from other
professional demands. Methods of construction
designed to increase the speed, strength, manoeu-
vring power, stability, invulnerabihty of ships;
methods of gun-building, by which the power and
accuracy of the gun is developed, or the strains
upon the gun decreased ; improvements in engines,
by which increase of speed and economy of fuel
and space are hoped to be effected; the details
of advance made in explosives, or in torpedoes, —
with none of these are we concerned immediately
and chiefly, but only incidentally; and that if
for but one reason, which will be recognized as
soon as stated, namely, that all these matters are
already in the hands of a sufficient number of
accomplished officers. They — ships, guns, en-
gines, explosives — are now receiving all the
attention that the government owes them.

Let me not, however, be misunderstood ; the
concern of the College with all these matters is
nevertheless very close, but it is with the results ob-

186 Naval Administration and Warfare

tained, not with the methods followed. How fast a
ship will go and for how long; within what space
she will turn and how quickly; what resistance
she presents to injuries, and what effect certain
injuries will have on her safety, speed, or handi-
ness ; in regard to guns and torpedoes, their range,
accuracy, the rapidity with which they can be
fired and the injury they can produce; with
engines, the important considerations of speed and
coal endurance — such are the factors that are
needed for the investigations of the College, and
you will notice that they denote the accomplished
results, they characterize the finished weapons
which are put into the hands of the military sea-
man to go forth to battle, to wage war. If his
ship will make a certain speed, she may, for all
he cares, be driven by a tallow-candle; if his gun
will do so much work, it may, so far as he is con-
cerned, be made of paste-board. The strategic
and tactical capabilities in which the labors of
the designer and builder have resulted, are those
with which the admiral and captain, in their
properest sphere, are alone concerned; and the
antecedent methods by which those results are
reached are of secondary importance to the
artist in war. Doubtless this argument may be
pushed to extreme by an unbalanced mind; the
proverbial difficulty of drawing the line will be

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 187

felt at times, and the line perhaps drawn too much
on one side or the other by this or that person
responsible for the direction of the College course ;
but, speaking broadly, it may be said that the
true aim is to promote, not the creation of naval
material, but the knowledge how to use that
material to the best advantage in the conduct of
war.

A very strong argument for thus withdrawing,
and, so to speak, protecting, the study of the
art of war from too close contact with that mechani-
cal and material advance upon which its modifica-
tions depend, is to be found in the spirit of our
age, and the effect of that spirit upon our naval
officers. For, is not the study of material phenom-
ena, and the bending of the forces of nature to
the service and comfort of man, one of the leading
interests of our generation 1 And is not this
tendency reflected in the Navy by the almost
exclusive attention paid by administrations and
officers to the development of the material of
the service .? Who, and how many, are studying
how best to use that material when war has
broken out ^ If you ask for authorities on guns,
on powder, on steel, on questions connected vwth
navigation, on steam, on mathematics, almost
any one of us can name them ; but who are our
authorities on the art of war .? Look at the Navy

188 Naval Administration and Warfare

Register; how many are the officers who are
working at the art of war ? Consult the index of
the publications of our Naval Institute; what
proportion do articles on waging war bear to
those on mechanical or physical progress in naval
material ? Is there then no reason for separating
and nursing the study of this art for a while from
too close contact with the related subjects ? I
will venture to say that if questions of develop-
ment of material be admitted to an equal share of
the College's attention in its early years, it will
be but a short time before the art of war will be
swamped by them and disappear from the course.
And what wonder then, gentlemen of the Navy,
that we find our noble calling undervalued in
this day ? Have we not ourselves much to blame
for it in this exclusive devotion to mechanical
matters ? Do we not hear, within and without,
the scornful disparaging cry, that everything is
done by machinery in these days, and that we are
waxing old and decaying, ready to vanish away ?
Everything done by machinery ! as if the subtlest
and most comprehensive mind that ever wrought
on this planet could devise a machine to meet the
innumerable incidents of the sea and of naval
war. The blind forces that work on ever in the
same routine, in storm or calm, buried deep in
the bowels of the ship, that would drive her with

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 189

equal serenity against friend or foe, through the
open sea or against a rock-bound coast, do every-
thing! The watchful eye, the trained courage, the
ready skill which watch storm and foe through
the countless phases of the sea and of battle,
which plan, which execute, do nothing! The
steed is all ; the rider naught ! Machinery revolves
the turret, disposes the heavy gun to receive its
charge, brings the charge from below, enters it
into the gun, brings the gun into action — there-
fore machinery does everything ! The quick eye
that seizes the fleeting moment, the calm mind
that prepares and watches its opportunity, the
cool temper, instinct with life in the face of death,
that can suffer and knows its danger, yet is master
alike of itself and of the unconscious force it guides,
does nothing ! Have we not all heard these sayings,
with unpleasant deductions from them ? But
let us ask, are not we ourselves to blame for them ?
Have not we, by too exclusive attention to mechani-
cal advance, and too scanty attention to the noble
art of war, which is the chief business of those
to whom the military movements of the Navy are
entrusted, contributed to the reproach which
has overtaken both us and it ?

Having laid down these negative lines of limita-
tion, the need of which has been shown by the
history of the College in its early struggle for exist-

190 Naval Administration and Warfare

ence, we now come to such definition of its position
and aims, and demonstration of its necessity at
the present time, as a decent regard to the endur-
ance of an audience will allow.

The general reply to the question, " What is
the object of the War College ? " will have been
anticipated by you from what has already been
said. It is the study and development, in a
systematic, orderly manner, of the art of war as
applied to the sea, or such parts of the land as
can be reached from ships. Taking the ships
and weapons supplied by the science of our age,
and formulating their powers and limitations as
developed by experience, we have the means
placed in naval hands by which to compass the
great ends of war. How best to adapt these means
to the end under the various circumstances and
in the various fields where ships and fleets are
called to act, is the problem proposed. Could we
find a perfect solution, we should have a perfect
theory of the way to wage war; and, it may be
added, the art of war would be a far simpler
matter, and its successful conduct a much less
noble achievement of man's faculties, than they
actually are. Could the course of the warrior,
given certain circumstances, be reduced to a
rigorous demonstration, to a mathematical cer-
tainty, it would approach more closely to the

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 191

mechanical, unvarying action of those blind forces
of nature, in harnessing which our age is fain to
see its greatest glory; but in so approaching, it
would part with those rarer qualities — intuition,
sagacity, judgment, daring, inspiration — which
place great captains among creators, and war
itself among the fine arts ; and the warrior himself
would descend from the artist to the mechanic.

If, however, absolute certainty in this field is
not attainable by thought; if the conduct of war
is controlled, not by cast-iron lules of invariable
application, immutable as the laws of nature,
but by general principles, in adapting which to
ever-shifting circumstances the skill of the warrior
is shown — are study and reflection therefore use-
less ? Must we trust our decision in every case
to the inspiration of the moment, unguided by
any precedents, uninformed by any experience ?
The great Napoleon, himself a close student of
war before he became one of its greatest masters,
summarized the reply in one of those epigrams
of which his genius was prolific : On the field of
action the happiest inspiration is often only a
recollection. No two, perhaps, of the myriad
battles of history have been exactly alike, either
in the ground contested or in their tactical com-
binations ; no theatre of war, great or small, on
land or sea, is without features that differentiate

192 Naval Administration and Warfare

it from every other, in the apprehension of the
strategist; but still among them all are marked
resemblances, common general characteristics,
which admit of statement and classification, and
which, when recognized and familiar to the mind,
develop that aptitude, that quickness to seize
the decisive features of a situation and to apply
at once the proper remedy, which the French
call coup d'ceil, a phrase for which I know no
English equivalent. This faculty may be, probably
is, inborn; but none is more susceptible of de-
velopment by training, either in the school of
actual war, or, when that experience cannot be
had, by study and well-considered practice. Thus,
a French naval author says : " The infinite num-
ber of conditions which go to make up all the
possible positions in which a fleet, a squadron, or
single ships may be found, causes that an officer
will very rarely find himself in a position precisely
similar to any one of those he has tried to foresee.
Whence it follows that all suppositions as to the
movements of fleets should be conformed to cer-
tain general principles, fruitful in consequences,
the apphcation of which to all possible positions
should train the mind and fix the ideas of officers,
in order that they may be early accustomed to seek
out and combine all those movements, famil-
iarity with which is absolutely necessary to them."

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 193

There have long been two conflicting opinions
as to the best way to fit naval officers, and indeed
all men called to active pursuits, for the discharge
of their duties. The one, of the so-called practical
man, would find in early beginning and constant
remaining afloat all that is requisite; the other
will find the best result in study, in elaborate
mental preparation. I have no hesitation in
avowing that personally I think that the United
States Navy is erring on the latter side; but,
be that as it may, there seems little doubt that
the mental activity which exists so widely is not
directed toward the management of ships in battle,
to the planning of naval campaigns, to the study
of strategic and tactical problems, nor even to
the secondary matters connected with the main-
tenance of warlike operations at sea. Now we
have had the results of the two opinions as to the
training of naval officers pretty well tested by the
experience of two great maritime nations, France
and England, each of which, not so much by
formulated purpose as by national bias, com-
mitted itself unduly to the one or the other. The
results were manifested in our War of Indepen-
dence, which gave rise to the only well-contested,
wide-spread maritime war between nearly equal
forces that modern history records. There remains
in my own mind no doubt, after reading the naval

194 Naval Administration and Warfare

history on both sides, that the EngUsh brought
to this struggle much superior seamanship, learned
by the constant practice of shipboard ; while the
French officers, most of whom had been debarred
from similar experience by the decadence of their
navy in the middle of the century, had devoted
themselves to the careful study of their profession.
In short, what are commonly called the practical
and the theoretical man were pitted against each
other, and the result showed how mischievous is
any plan which neglects either theory or practice,
or which ignores the fact that correct theoretical
ideas are essential to successful practical work.
The practical seamanship and experience of the
English were continually foiled by the want of
correct tactical conceptions on the part of their
own chiefs, and the superior science of the French,
acquired mainly by study. It is true that the
latter were guided by a false policy on the part
of their government and a false professional
tradition. The navy, by its mobility, is pre-
eminently fitted for offensive war, and the French
deliberately and constantly subordinated it to
defensive action. But, though the system was
faulty, they had a system; they had ideas; they
had plans familiar to their officers, while the
English usually had none — and a poor system
is better than none at all.

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 195

This decisive advantage, gained by scientific
military theory over mere practical ship-handling,
is the more remarkable because the French art of
naval v?ar was itself then of slender proportions,
and but little diffused throughout their navy. It
prevailed, because the English had none until
Rodney appeared. Thus, La Serre, an officer
of that War, wrote : " We have several works
which treat of the manoeuvres of ships and the
evolutions of squadrons, but we have none treating
the attack and defence of fleets. It is possible that
the circumstances in which two squadrons may
meet are so varied that a regular treatise upon
them cannot be made. This reason would render
more interesting a work which should contain
detailed and critical accounts of sea-fights which
have actually occurred. Theory has already
done much to teach the seaman the art of com-
bating the elements, and every day it is adding
to this sort of knowledge, but there is too great
neglect to consider ships when engaged in battle.
The infinite number of incidents which can
occur during an action should not be a reason for
putting aside this study. By it only can we
successfully estimate what will be the effect of
movements which we contemplate, and what must
be done to counteract the designs of the enemy.
So long as these ideas are not familiar to officers,

196 Naval Administration and Warfare

the fear of compromising themselves by manoeuvres
will lead them to limit naval actions to simple
cannonades, vs^hich will end by leaving the rival
squadrons in the same respective conditions in
which they were before fighting."

We are not to understand from this that the
knowledge of the art of war was absolutely non-
existent, but that, not having yet been written
down, it existed only in the minds of a few choice
spirits. Thus, Ramatuelle, another officer of
that day, wrote (about 1802): "The art of war
is carried to a great degree of perfection on land,
but is far from being so at sea. It is the object
of all naval tactics; but it is scarcely known
among us, except as a tradition. Many authors
have written on the subject of naval tactics, but
they have confined themselves to the manner of
forming orders or passing from one order to
another; they have entirely neglected to establish
the principles for regulating conduct in the face
of the enemy; for attacking or refusing action;
for pursuit and retreat; according to position,
i.e., to windward or to leeward; or according
to the relative strength of the opposing forces."
In a word, the management of ships in
battle was a matter dependent upon oral
tradition, not upon recognized authority; upon
the zeal of the individual officer for profes-

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 197

sional improvement, not upon governmental
instruction.

These two independent witnesses — for, though
brought up in the same service, one went into
exile with the royalists while the other dedicated
his work to Bonaparte — agree also as to the
necessity of governmental action to promote
general professional improvement. Thus, La
Serre says : " The instruction of a corps of officers
should be directed by the government, for if it
should be abandoned to itself in this matter,
some individual members might become accom-
plished, but the mass would remain ignorant;
and the reverse happens when the government
interests itself in the matter." And Ramatuelle
says : " The naval art has made, in the century
which is just finished, progress which requires
from officers deep and serious study. No one
more than myself pays sincere homage to the
knowledge and talents of those who have shed
lustre upon the French navy — above all, in
the war of 1778; but instruction relative to
grand manoeuvres was concentrated in far too
few men; it was propagated only by tradition.
This means was often wanting to the officer
who might have been most capable of profiting,
if chance had only brought him in contact with
able men. It may be remarked that Du Pavilion,

198 Naval Administration and Warfare

who had been chief of staff to Admiral D'Orvilliers,
who showed superior talents in all circumstances,
who is considered to have brought naval tactics
out of chaos, belonged to the department of
Rochefort; and that Buord, Vaugiraud, Leguille,
who had exercised with the utmost distinction
the post of chief of staff in the principal squadrons,
belonged to the same department. It is to be
presumed that the other departments would
also have furnished a proportionate contingent,
if they had had a Du Pavilion who might have
constantly communicated to them his ideas and
his knowledge." To provide for the study and
dissemination of knowledge on these very matters
is the object of the War College.

To return now to the positive definition of the
objects of the College :

The heads under which this study of the art
of war may be subdivided and grouped are
numerous; and there are also certain collateral
subjects, which will appear in the programme
of the course, the immediate bearing of which
upon the effective conduct of war will not be at
once apparent, and will therefore require some
words of explanation in their turn. I propose,
however, first to speak of those divisions the
importance of which is obvious and will be at
once recognized, but concerning which there are

Objects 0} the U. S. Naval War College 199

some remarks to be made in the nature of closer
definition, and also enlargement beyond the
scope usually associated with them.

The two principal heads of division are of course
Strategy and Grand Tactics. The meanings of
each of these two terms may be assumed to be
apprehended, with some accuracy and clearness,
by such an audience as the present. There is,
however, a certain radical distinction in the con-
ditions by which each of these divisions of the
great subject are modified, which I wish to
enforce.

" Strategy," says Jomini, speaking of the art
of war on land, " is the art of making war upon
the map, and comprehends the whole theatre
of warlike operations. Grand tactics is the art
of posting troops upon the battle-field, accord-
ing to the accidents of the ground; of bringing
them into action ; and the art of fighting upon the
ground in contradistinction to planning upon a
map. Its operations may extend over a field of
ten or twelve miles in extent. Strategy decides
where to act. Grand tactics decides the manner
of execution and the employment of troops,"
when, by the combinations of strategy, they
have been assembled at the point of action.

If these definitions are accurate, it follows that
strategy, having to do with a class of military

200 Naval Administration and Warfare

movements executed beyond the reach of the
adversary's weapons, does not depend in its
main principles upon the character of the vpeapons
at any particular age. When the weapons begin
to enter as a factor, and blows are about to be
exchanged, strategy gives place to grand tactics.
Hence it follows, with easy clearness, that " in
great strategic operations, victory will now, as
ever, result from the application of the principles
which have led to the success of great generals in
all ages, of Alexander and Caesar, as well as of
Frederick and Napoleon." The greatest master
of the art of war, the first Napoleon, has in like
manner laid down the principle that, to become a
great commander, the soldier must study the cam-
paigns of Hannibal, Caesar, and Alexander, as
well as those of Turenne, Prince Eugene, Fred-
erick, and other great modern leaders. In short,
the great warrior must study history.

I have wished to bring out this point clearly, if
briefly, for there is a very natural, though also
very superficial, disposition in the Navy, at
present, to look upon past naval history as a blank
book so far as present usefulness is concerned.
Yet few, if any, will maintain that the introduction
of firearms did not differentiate the wars of
Frederick and Napoleon from those of Hannibal
and Caesar, fully as much as our modern inventions

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 201

have changed the character of naval warfare.
Take some of the points upon which strategy is
called to decide, and see how independent they
are of the particular weapons, which must be
assumed as not very unequal between the two
enemies ; or, if they are unequal, that very neglect
on the part of the one is a good historical lesson.
Such points are: the selection of the theatre of
war; the discussion of its decisive points, of its
principal lines of communication; of the fortresses,
or, in case of the sea, the military ports, regarded
as a refuge for ships, or as obstacles to progress;
the combinations that can be made, considering
these features of the strategic field; the all-
important point of the choice of the objective;
the determination of the line to be followed in
reaching the objective, and the maintenance of
that line practically undisturbed by an enemy;
such, and many other kindred matters, fall within
the province of strategy, and receive illustration
from history. This illustration will be fullest and
most satisfactory when there is an approach to
equality between the belligerents; but most
valuable lessons may be derived also from the
study of those wars, more numerous by far, in
which the naval preponderance of one nation has
exercised an immense and decisive effect upon
the issues of great contests both by land and sea ;

202 Naval Administration and Warfare

in whicli, if I may so say, the Navy has been a
most, perhaps the most, important single strategic
factor in the whole wide field of a war.

It is obviously impossible, in an address the
chief merit of which should be brevity, to follow
far this line of thought; but I wish to throw
whatever weight my personal opinion may carry
against that easy assumption that we have nothing
to learri from the naval past. During the three
years that I have been attached to the College,
my reading and thought have been chiefly, though
not exclusively, devoted to Naval History, with
an ever growing conviction of the value and the
wide scope of the lessons to be drawn therefrom ;
and I will sound again the note of warning against
that plausible cry of the day which finds all prog-
ress in material advance, disregarding that
noblest sphere in which the mind and heart of
man, in which all that is god-like in man, reign
supreme; and against that temper which looks
not to the man, but to his armor. And indeed,
gentlemen of the Navy, if you be called upon
some day to do battle, it will be for the country to
see that your weapons are fit and your force
respectable; but upon your own selves, under
God, must you rely to do the best with the means
committed to your charge. For that discharge
you will be responsible, not to the country only,

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 203

but to your own conscience ; which will condemn
you if, in the eager curiosity to know how your
weapons are manufactured, you have neglected
to prepare yourself for their use in war.

To pass now from Strategy to Tactics. I wish
first to impress upon you that the word tactics
has, unfortunately, a double application. It
means in one case those movements, more or
less simple, by which military units pass from
one formation to another, e. g., from line to
column, etc. As you know, there are various
systems of evolutions by which these transfor-
mations are made. While the discussion of the
merits of such systems is a proper subject for
this College, the authoritative adoption of any
system must rest with the government.

The second application of the word tactics
has, for the sake of distinction, received the
qualifying epithet of " grand " tactics. It relates
to combinations upon the battle-field, or in its
immediate neighborhood; when strategy, having
done or failed to do its work, gives place to the
clash of arms. Since the weapons of the day
enter here as great and decisive factors, it is
evident that the method of applying the principles
of war on the battle-field will differ from age to
age. " Naval tactics," says Morogues, a French
tactician of the eighteenth century, " is not a

204 Naval Administration and Warfare

science founded upon principles absolutely in-
variable; it is based upon conditions, the chief
causes of which, namely, the arms, may change;
which in turn causes a change in the construction
of ships, the manner of handling them, and so
finally in the disposition and handling of fleets."
Is then the study of the grand tactics of the
past, of history, useless ? To answer this ques-
tion let us consider what is the object of education,
of study ? Is it only to accumulate facts of im-
mediate visible use ? or does mental training count
for much ? Do not instructors at our naval and
military academies recognize often that the trouble
with this or that lad is not deficiency of brain,
but lack of the habit of application ? Is there not
attributed to the study of mathematics and of the
classics a value for mental training quite inde-
pendent of that utilitarian value which the Ameri-
can mind tends to regard exclusively ? If so, the
study of past tactics must have a value. For what
is strategy, and what tactics, but the adaptation
of means to ends .'' Such an end, so much force to
achieve it, so many difliculties in the way — these
are the elements of every problem of war in any
age; while the adaptation of the means to the
end by various leaders, whether accurate or faulty ;
the fertility of combination or of resources dis-
played by them; are so many studies, which,

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 205

though they may cease to have use as precedents,
nevertheless exercise, train and strengthen the
mind which seeks to ehcit from them the princi-
ples of war.

And herein also is the great justification of
the study of land warfare as established at this
institution. When we consider only the great
difference existing between the tactical units of a
modern army and of a modern fleet, or between the
diversified difficulties of a land theatre of war as
contrasted with the comparatively plain surface
of the ocean, we may be tempted to think that
the study of war, as apphed to one, can throw no
light upon the other. But, even if history had
not shown that the principles of strategy have
held good under circumstances so many and so
various that they may be justly assumed of uni-
versal application, to sea as well as to land, there
would still remain the fine mental training afforded
by the successive modifications that have been
introduced into the art of war by great generals.
They Indicate the means adopted by brilliant
men, either to meet the new exigencies of their
own day, or by some new and unexpected com-
bination to obtain advantages while retaining old
weapons. In short, they are lessons in the
use of means to attain ends in war; they
bring into play and strengthen those muscles

206 Naval Administration and Warfare

of the mind which do the work of conducting
war.

Between Strategy and Grand Tactics comes
logically Logistics. Strategy decides where to
act; Logistics is the art of moving armies; it
brings the troops to the point of action and con-
trols questions of supply; Grand Tactics decides
the methods of giving battle.

There are obvious differences of condition be-
tween armies and fleets that must modify the
scope of the word logistics, which it yet may be
convenient to retain.' Fleets, to a great extent,
carry their communications with them, in the holds
of the ships ; while details analogous to marching
and quartering troops, and in great degree to main-
tenance of supplies, are not to be found with navies.
Nevertheless, in a distant operation the question
of supplies will assume importance. We have at
least two great needs now, over and above those
of sailing ships — coal and more frequent renewal
of ammunition. These introduce the question
of lines of supply and their protection. If, for
instance, it were necessary for us to maintain
military possession of a point on the Isthmus,
or to conduct any great operation there, there
must be a line of communication thereto. How

' The recent (1908) cruise of the Atlantic Fleet to Magda-
lena Bay, in the Pacific, among other bearings, has been an
experimental study in Logistics.

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 207

shall it be protected ? What is the best means of
guarding and distributing supply vessels ? Would
a line of communications be best safe-guarded
by sending out a large body of colliers and supply
ships, convoyed by a heavy detachment of men-
of-war; or by patrolling the routes by scattered
cruisers always on the wing ? We shall have for
this at least one historical instance in our course.
Again, the coal supply of commerce-destroyers
is a very important question which nobody
seems to care to face. It would be amusing, were
it not painful, to see our eagerness to have fast
ships, and our indifference to supplying them
with coal. What neutral power will sell us coal
when engaged in war with a more powerful
maritime State ? and what is a commerce-destroyer
without coal ? '

' The following quotation from the well-known French
writer on naval matters. Admiral Jurien de la Gravifere, has
interest for those who look to commerce-destroying as the
main reliance in an offensive war. Speaking of the early years
of this century, he says : " The period of disasters was about
to succeed the period of captures — inevitable issue of our
commerce-destroying campaigns. How could it have been
otherwise? All our ports were blockaded; even before Tra-
falgar, English fleets covered the seas. What unrelenting pur-
suit had not our frigates to expect, when once our great fleets
were annihilated ? It would be much worse at the present day.
It would not be long before our coal-depots would be taken
from us, and we would go about from neutral port to neutral
port, seeking in vain the fuel which would be everywhere
denied us." {Revue des Deux Mondes, October, 1887).

208 Naval Administration and War jar e

Such are the leading features of our study
upon which I care to enlarge to-day. Of less
conspicuous subjects I will hastily explain their
presence in the course. Hygiene, besides being
by law a necessary part of instruction in every
Government institution, has such bearing upon
the efficiency of armed forces that its place in
warfare cannot be denied. As to its usefulness
to line ofl&cers, I will venture to quote words of
my own : " The responsibility for the health of
crews rests ultimately with the commanding
officers; who, however they be guided ordinarily
by the opinion of the surgeon, must be able on
occasion to overrule intelligently the professional
bias of the latter." A doctor's business is to save
life; the admiral's or captain's to risk it, when
necessary and possible to attain a given end.

The importance of the efficiency of the units of
a fleet to the efficiency of the whole, indicates the
point where naval construction touches the art
of war. A crippled ship affects all the tactical
combinations of a fleet; a collision between two
ships has ere now led to a great battle, and the
results of the battle have modified the issue of a
war. With the delicately calculated constructions
of the present day, a single great injury to a ship's
hull may affect her tactical qualities, her speed,
handling, stability, to a disastrous degree. In what

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 209

way and to what extent particular local injuries
may thus affect her, and how they may be partially
remedied in battle, are so obviously tactical
questions as to need no further comment. In
accordance with what has before been said, the
effort has been to direct the teaching in construc-
tion toward tactical effects, rather than to con-
structional methods pure and simple. The eminent
ability of Mr. Gatewood, who possesses not only
great knowledge, but a readiness and lucidity of
explanation that I have rarely heard equalled,
gives me hope, if his services are continued, that
we shall reach very valuable results in the tactical
management of ships and remedying of injuries.
In the matter of Coast Defence and Attack, I
will only say that it is intended always to have the
subject treated by both an army and naval officer,
in order to bring out both sides of a large and
intricate question. Very different views are held
on either side ; those of extremists seem at times
mutually destructive. If precise agreement cannot
be reached, much may be hoped from dispas-
sionate discussion, in getting rid of all differences
that are due only to misapprehension. And
where differences are fundamental, we shall
learn at least to understand one another's meaning
and reasons, to argue at least to the other man's
point; not beating the air, nor laboriously over-

210 Naval Administration and Warfare

throwing men of straw. I beg of you all not to
consider a difference of opinion, however radical,
to be an injury or an insult. The caution may
seem unnecessary, but I swear by my experience
that it is not.

And now, gentlemen, I must apologize, after
the manner of speakers, for having detained
you so long. If the fault has been somewhat
deliberate, I hope the pardon will not be
refused. It remains only to thank you for
your patience, and to welcome cordially, on the
part of the College, the officers who are about
to follow the course. We are here as fellow-
students. The art of naval war may have a big
future, but it is yet in its babyhood. I, at least,
know not where its authorities are to be found.
Let us take, as indicating our aim, these words
of Bismarck in a very recent speech : " It must
not be said," urged he, " that other nations can
do what we can. That is just what they cannot
do. We have the material, not only for forming
an enormous army, but for furnishing it with
officers. We have a corps of officers such as no
other Power has." The higher we head, the
higher we shall fetch.

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 211

Intended Programme of Naval War College for
Session of 1888, beginning August 6

Naval History considered with reference to
the effect of Naval power upon general history;
indicating the strategic bearing of naval power
as a particular factor in general wars, and dis-
cussing the strategic and tactical use of the naval
forces on their own element, as illustrative of
the principles of war. — Captain A. T. Mahan,
U. S. N.

The true naval conditions during the War of
1812, at home and abroad, on the sea and on
the lakes; and their bearing upon the course of
the war, on both frontiers and on the ocean. —
Theodore Roosevelt, Esq.

Naval Gunnery: the practical use of the gun
at sea, and the tactical power and limitations of
the weapon. — Lieutenant J. F. Meigs, U. S. N.

Present condition of commerce and commercial
sea routes between the Atlantic and Pacific,
with an estimate of the effect produced upon
them by a trans-isthmian canal, including a view
of the military and political conditions of the
Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Carib-
bean Sea. — Lieut.-Com. C. H. Stockton, U. S. N.

Naval Strategy. — Captain A. T. Mahan,
U. S. N.

212 Naval Administration and Warfare

Strategic features of the Pacific Ocean and
Pacific Coast of the United States. — Lieut.-Com.
C. H. Stockton, U. S. N.

Strategic features of the Gulf of Mexico and
Caribbean Sea. — Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N.

Strategic Study of the Lake Frontier of the
United States. — Lieut. C. C. Rogers, U. S. N.

Strategic Study (outline) of the Sea-coast of
the United States from Portland, Maine, to and
including Chesapeake Bay. — Captain A. T.
Mahan, U. S. N.

Coast Defence and Attack. — Lieut. Duncan
Kennedy, U. S. N.

Defence of the Sea-coast of the United States. —
General H. L. Abbot, U. S. Engineers.

Military History, Strategy, and Tactics. —
Lieut. J. P. Wisser, U. S. Artillery.

Tactics of the Gun. — Lieut. J. F. Meigs,
U. S. N.

Tactics of the Torpedo. — Lieut. Duncan Ken-
nedy, U. S. N.

Tactics of the Ram. — Commander P. F.
Harrington, U. S. N.

Fleet Battle Tactics. — Captain A. T. Mahan,
U. S. N.

Naval War Game. — Lieut. McCarty Little,
U. S. N.

Naval Reserves, and the recruiting and training

Objects of the U. S. Naval War College 213

of men for the Navy. — Lieut. S. A. Staunton,
U. S. N.

Naval Logistics ; maintenance of coal, ammuni-
tion and other supphes to a fleet acting at a
distance; estabhshment of depots and chains of
seaports. — Lieut. C. C. Rogers, U, S. N.

General Staff; Intelligence Branch. Foreign
War Colleges and Staff Academies; their relation
to the General Staff. Intelligence Systems of
Foreign Armies. General Consideration of Naval
Intelligence Departments at home and abroad.
Meaning of Naval Intelhgence in detail. Strategic
value of Trade Routes; their defence and attack
in war. Reconnaissances. Reasons for General
Staff. Essence of Intelligence work is prepara-
tion for war. — Lieut. C. C. Rogers, U. S. N.

Preservation and Care of Iron Ships and injuries
to which they are Hable. The Ship considered
as a Gun Platform. — Naval Constructor R.
Gatewood, U. S. N.

Naval Hygiene. — Medical Director R. C.
Dean, U. S. N.

International Law, treated with special refer-
ence to questions wdth which naval officers may
have to do. — Professor J. R. Soley, U. S. N.

THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF

THE UNITED STATES NAVAL

WAR COLLEGE

THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF THE
UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COL-
LEGE.

AN ADDRESS

September, 1892

GENTLEMEN of the Navy: — It hzAhetn
my hope, and I may say my expectation,
that upon this occasion when, after a prolonged
and to some extent disastrous interruption of its
career of usefulness, the War College is about to
resume its course under new auspices and with
better hopes, the opening ceremonies would have
been signalized by a formal address from the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. James
Russell Soley. To him, under the Secretary
himself, is mainly due that a start this year has
been made at all. He has been in past years,
and from the very origin of the College, closely
connected with it; both generally, by sympathy
with its ideas, and, especially, as a most able
lecturer upon international law. It is probable that
some of those now among my hearers may have

218 Naval Administration and Warfare

been so fortunate as to hear, at former sessions,
his admirable exposition of the principles of that
law, with particular reference to the circum-
stances of naval officers, and the perplexities
which they may encounter. This association of
the past, together with his present official position,
combined to indicate him pointedly as the most
proper person to deliver this opening address;
for, in addition to the strong personal reasons I
have mentioned, his presence would have been
the manifest token of the cordial interest now
extended by the Navy Department, the want of
which was keenly felt in the first strong and, I
may boldly say, not unsuccessful effort here to
develop the art of naval war. The premature
blight that fell upon our early endeavors did not
wholly obliterate the recognition of the decisive
advance made during our brief and checkered
existence. Of this I have had the assurance, both
directly by word and indirectly by action, from
so many who attended the former courses, that
no fond self-deception can account for the con-
viction I now express, of the results obtained by
those of whom I was for most of the time the
nominal head.

To my urgent and repeated requests the As-
sistant Secretary gave no more than a conditional
promise; and I owe only to myself that I so far

Character of the Naval War College 219

depended upon it as to have deferred to the last
three days such hurried preparations as I have
made, personally, to meet this audience, and, so
far as in me lies, to replace the loss which we
have to regret. To the embarrassment of scanty
time, for which I have to blame my want of pre-
vision, is added in my case the fact that I have
already, on a former opening, delivered an address
in which I explained at some length the objects
and aims of the College from my own point of
view; which I may add was that of my then
immediate superior, the Chief of the Bureau of
Navigation, who to-day is with us as the com-
mander of the Squadron of Evolution. Had
that address gone no further than the ears of its
auditors, it might now, after the lapse of four
years, have been resurrected like the sermon
from the proverbial barrel and done duty again;
but having incautiously been allowed to pass into
print, and somewhat widely distributed within
the service, this resource is not now open to me.

Like all new departures, however, the College
has to encounter not merely constructional diffi-
culties, the friction which inevitably attends
every effort to do something which has not been
done before, and which formed the subject of
my former address. It has to encounter the more
formidable, because more discouraging, obstacles

220 Naval Administration and Warfare

of direct objection, based often on reasonable
grounds; more often, perhaps, on unconsidered
prejudice. Of the former, the reasonable criticism,
I shall now only say that I trust there will always
be found in the College representatives an open
and dispassionate mind, ready to receive, consider,
and profit by suggestions; from whomsoever
coming. I propose to-day to devote my remarks
only to those objections which, while superficially
plausible, are, I am convinced, due to lack of
reflection and to the tendency we all have to be
influenced by words or phrases, without pausing
to reflect that, in their true and commonly re-
ceived meaning, they are not really applicable
to the thing to which, for the moment, they are
applied.

Take, for instance, the word " obsolete." I
doubt if there is any one word in the language
that did so much harm to the United States
Navy as this little one in its misapplied, yet
common, use, during a period of years with which
I and many of my hearers have been contemporary.
The ship built to-day, it has been freely said, will
be " obsolete " ten years hence ; nay, we were
fortunate if we escaped the stronger yet equally
positive assertion that the ship laid down to-day
will be " obsolete " by the time she can be
launched. What was the result of this seemingly

Character of the Naval War College 221

slight and harmless exaggeration of talk ? Why,
simply this: That with all the valuable services
and prestige of the navy during the War of Seces-
sion, with the popular favor still green, with
Farragut scarcely yet in his grave, everything
like naval advance was stopped because of the
threat of obsolescence. " Of what use," asked
the unprofessional citizen, safe in an immense
professional backing in the use of this word
and its ideas, " of what use to build ships which
are so soon to be obsolete ? Let us wait until
we have reached something that will not become
obsolete." So we waited, with our hands and
energies ironed by the little word " obsolete,"
until, less than ten years ago, the material of the
American navy was the derision of the world
and the mortification of our officers; and even
now, despite the judicious and untiring efforts
of recent secretaries, we have not, and for some
years to come will not have, a navy commen-
surate with our national importance, or fitted to
fulfil our fast growing sense of our proper sphere
and influence in the world outside our borders.
Within two years ' I have seen the American
navy styled a phantom fleet by an English news-
paper of the first rank.

How ready, all this time, the country really

' Written in 1892.

222 Naval Administration and Warfare

was to respond to an intelligent presentation of
the necessities of a navy, has been shown by the
liberal appropriations, and yet more by the liberal
expressions of men of all parties and shades of
opinion; despite this being a time in which,
until very lately, party divisions turned more
on tradition than on living issues. What stopped
advance was not the unwillingness of the country,
but the cry of " obsolete." Yet in what other
practical walk of Ufe is advance thus conditioned ?
What technical calling refuses to make a step for-
ward, because the ground it reaches to-day will
be abandoned to-morrow ? Who would say
that iron rails are obsolete, in the sense that they
are of no use at all, because steel rails are found
to be better .? And finally, before quitting the
subject, what is the last, and, in my judgment,
most rational, expression of foreign professional
opinion concerning these so-called " obsolete "
ships .'' Simply, yet most significantly, this :
That the nation which, in the later stages of a
war, be it long or short, when the newest ships
have received their wear and undergone their
hammering, the nation which then can put for-
ward the largest reserve of ships of the older types,
will win the struggle.

So much for " obsolete." Before passing, how-
ever, to the word upon the erroneous application

Character of the Naval War College 223

of which I desire chiefly to fix your attention, I
want to-day to allude to an idea closely akin to
" obsolete," which, though widely spread and
accepted, has not, so far as I know, been formu-
lated into a phrase with which to pass current.
I allude to the view that naval history, in which
is embodied the naval experience of past ages, has
no present utility to us. When I was first ordered
to the College, before even I had begun to develop
the subjects intrusted to me, an officer, con-
siderably my senior in rank, asked what I was going
to undertake. On my naming naval history, he
rejoined, " Well, you won't have much to say
about that." The words, I fear, voiced a very
general feeling, an impression of that vague and
untested character which is ever to be deprecated
when it is allowed to become a potent factor in
determining action. It struck, I am free to con-
fess, a chord in my own breast. Nay, I am glad
to avow that it did so; for whatever small value
my own opinion may possess can lose nothing,
but rather gain, by the admission that study and
reflection have resulted in displacing that most
powerful of resistant forces, an unintelligent
prejudice. I am, however, happy to be able to
support my own conclusions, which rest upon
no proofs of personal capacity for the manage-
ment of modern naval fleets, by that of one of

224 Naval Administration and Warfare

the foremost admirals now living, belonging to the
largest navy in the world. The name and repute
of Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps-Hornby is known,
I presume, to all naval officers; certainly in his
own service, where he has commanded the most
modern fleets with distinction, his opinions are
quoted with respect not far removed from rever-
ence. In a letter he was kind enough to write
me on a published work of mine, which embodied
the results of my lectures at this College, he said :
" I am glad to see that, like the German army,
you base your conclusions upon the history of
the profession."

I come now to the matter upon which I wish
more particularly to speak; and here again I
will illustrate by one of those casual conversa-
tions, which, Uke straws, often show more clearly
than deliberate utterances how the wind of pro-
fessional prejudice is blowing. I was in Washing-
ton a few months ago and, coming out of one of
the clubs, I met on the door step a couple of
naval officers. We stopped to talk, and one asked
me : " Do you expect a session of the College
this year .'' " I replied that I hoped so. " Well,"
he said, " are you going to do anything practical ? "
I recognized my enemy at once in the noble
word " practical," which has been dropped
like an angel of light out of its proper sphere

Character 0} the Naval War College 225

and significance, and made to do duty against
its best friends; as a man's foes are often those of
his own household. I endeavored to get out of
the scrape, which would involve an extempore
discussion of the true scope and meaning of the
word practical, by resorting to the Socratic method,
liberally practised by the modern Irish, which
would throw the burden of explanation upon my
questioner. " What do you mean by practical ? "
I said. The reply was a little hesitating, as is
apt to be the case to a categorical question, and
after a moment's pause he said : " Well, torpedo-
boats and launches and that sort of thing."

Of course, I knew in a general way what was
coming, when I asked my question; nor did I
in the least contest the application of the word
practical to torpedo-boats or launches. Con-
cerning the latter, in fact, it was a recommendation
of my first report as president of the College, that
such should be provided for practice in the
delicate and difficult management of the ram
in action — a problem with which, I am bold to
say, the naval mind has not begun to deal. But,
while willing to concede this positive meaning,
given to the word practical, I do most decidedly
object to the implied negative limitation, which
confines it to the tangible utilitarian results, to
that which can be touched, weighed, measured.

226 Naval Administration and Warfare

handled, and refuses to concede the honor of
" practical " to those antecedent processes of
thought and reflection, upon which the results of
rational human eflFort always depend, and without
which they cannot be reached — unless, indeed,
by the bungling, tedious and painful method
which is called " butt end foremost." It is to
this view of the matter, and to the full legitimate
force of the word " practical," that I wish to-day
to direct your attention; for the limitation so
frequently imposed on it, and so generally ac-
cepted by thoughtless prejudice, is the great
stumbling block in the way of the College, just
as I have tried to show that the word " obsolete "
so long held the United States Navy in a state of
suspended animation.

In discussing the word " practical," I do not
of course propose to go into its etymology, for
the sake of making a barren argument as to
what it ought to mean. I intend to accept it in
its common significance, as familiar to us in cur-
rent speech; and I propose to maintain that, in
that sense, it is just as applicable to the processes
of thought which precede action as it is to the
action which follows thought and reflection; the
only difi^erence being that, taking the whole
process of thought and action together, the
thought which dictates the action is more practical.

Character of the Naval War College 227

is of a higher order of practicalness than the
resultant action itself Of this the old and com-
mon proverb " Look before you leap " is a vig-
orous presentment. The word " practical," how-
ever, has become so warped — not in its meaning,
but in its application — that the practical man is
he who disdains the theoretical process of looking;
that is, who will have no study, no forethought,
no reflection, but simply leaps — that is, acts.

Of course, when you reach a reductio ad ahsur-
dum — if you do — the victim cries out : He never
meant any such thing. Neither does the man
who leaps without looking mean to reach the
possibly uncomfortable berth in which he lands.
But let it be observed, it is not man's nature to
leap without looking; the irrational brute does
not do that. Men leap without looking, because
they have failed to prepare, because they have
neglected the previous processes of thought and
reflection, and so, when the sudden call for action
comes, it is " leap at all hazards ; " and so, to
quote Holy Writ, while they are saying " peace
and safety," sudden destruction comes upon them
like travail upon a woman with child, and they
cannot escape." How often have we — I speak
at least to men of my own time — been told that
presence of mind consists largely, for the average
man mainly, in preparation of mind. When

228 Naval Administration and Warfare

you take the deck, think what you will do in
any emergency likely to arise — a man falls over-
board, a collision threatens from this or that
quarter, land or reef may be unexpectedly sighted.
Good. But is the thought, which is simply study
without books, less practical than the resultant
action ? Is it less practical, even if no call for
action arises ?

Let us, for illustration, draw upon an art which
has supplied many useful analogies to describe
processes of gradual development — that of the
architect. Before erecting a building, be it one
of simple design and unpretentious appearance,
like that in which we are now seated, or be it one
of the complicated and elaborate designs which
decorate the cliffs of Newport — what careful
study, plotting and planning goes on in the offices
of the architect ! What calculations to ensure
convenience, to economize space, to please the
eye. It is pure student's work, beyond which he,
not merely the experience of the architect, but
also years of patient study, devoted to mastering
the principles of his art as embodied in the ex-
perience of his predecessors. Before a brick is
laid, perhaps before the sod is turned, the com-
plete design — the future house — exists upon
paper.

Is all this prior labor of the architect in his

Character oj the Naval War College 229

office, and all the varied study that has enabled
him to perform it not " practical ? " and does the
" practical " work begin only when the carpenter
and the bricklayer put their hands to it ? If
you think so, gather your mechanics and your
hod carriers, provide your material of bricks
and mortar, and then, setting to work without
your designs and calculations, rejoice in the
evidence of practical efficiency you have dis-
played to the world !

All the world knows, gentlemen, that we are
building a new navy; the process has begun, is
going on, and its long continuance is an avowed
purpose. We are to have a navy adequate to the
sense of our needs; and that sense is bound to
expand as our people appreciate more and more,
and as they are beginning to realize more and
more, that a country's power and influence must
depend upon her hold upon regions without her
own borders, and to which the sea leads. The
influence of the little British islands gives a lesson
our people will surely learn. Well, when we get
our navy, what are we going to do with it ? Shall
we, like the careless officer-of-the-deck, wait for
the emergency to arise ? If we do, we shall pretty
surely leap without much looking. Or do you
think that when the time of war comes you will
find a vade mecum, a handy pocket manual, the

230 Naval Administration and Warfare

result of other men's labors, which will tell you
just what to do; much like one of those old sea-
manship problems: Riding to a single anchor
and ebb tide, with the wind on the starboard
bow and a shoal on the port quarter, get under-
way and stand out to sea. A remark to that effect
was made by an officer, a commander now afloat,
who I think is regarded by all as one of our most
intelligent, as he certainly is one of our most
advanced men. " I thought," he said, in dis-
cussing some naval problems of the kind with
which the College proposes to grapple, " that,
the case arising, I could turn to some work where
the dispositions of a fleet, of a convoy, and other
various questions connected with maritime expe-
ditions would be treated and their solution stated;
but I find there is none, and I myself do not know."
At present the matter is perhaps of little conse-
quence; but will it not be unfortunate for the
responsible officers to be in like plight, when the
call for action arises .?

It is a singular comment upon the line in which
naval thought has long been running, that the
reproach to the French navy, though it was then
a very accomplished service, near a hundred years
ago, by one of its most thoughtful members, is
equally applicable, perhaps even more applicable
to the naval profession of all countries in our

Character of the Naval War College 231

own day. " The art of war," said the writer,
" is carried to a great degree of perfection on
land, but it is far from being so at sea. It is
the object of all naval tactics, but it is scarcely
known among us except as a tradition. Many
authors have written on the subject of naval
tactics, but they have confined themselves to the
manner of forming orders or passing from one
order to another. They have entirely neglected
to establish the principles for regulating conduct
in the face of an enemy, for attacking or refusing
action, for pursuit or retreat, according to
position or according to the relative strength of
the opposing forces."

This is painfully the case now. Not only during
the time I was actually resident here, but in the
four years which have since then elapsed, I have
made a practice of sending for the catalogues of
the leading military and naval booksellers, at
home and abroad, and carefully scanning their
lists. Whatever could be found bearing in any
way on the Art of Naval War I have had ordered
for the College library; with the result that a
single one of the short book shelves you can see
downstairs contains all that we have to show
on the subject of naval tactics; and of that space
nearly one-half is occupied with elaborate treatises
upon the tactics of sailing ships, from Paul Hoste

232 Naval Administration and Warfare

to Chopart. Of the remainder, none can be
quoted as an authority; and it may be questioned
if any rises to the dignity of a systematic, well-
digested system. They are simple, short essays,
more or less suggestive; but that they possess no
great weight is evident from the fact that the
authors' names suggest nothing to the hearer.

The significance of this fact, however, does not
lie in the mere absence of treatises. Did such
exist, had we the vade mecums, the pocket manuals,
with their rules and standards, the work of some
one or two masters in the art, their usefulness to
the profession would be very doubtful if they
did not provoke others to search for themselves — ■
to devote time and thought to mastering the
facts, and the principles upon which the sup-
posed masters had based their own conclusions.
War cannot be made a rule of thumb ; and any
attempt to make it so will result in disaster,
grave in proportion to the gravity with which
the issues of war are ever clothed.

No; the lamentable fact indicated by this
meagre result is that the professional mind is not
busying itself with the considerations and prin-
ciples bearing upon the Conduct, or Art, of War.
There is no demand, and therefore there is no
supply. There is little or no interest, and con-
sequently there are no results. In what other

Character of the Naval War College 233

department of contemporary life is a lively pro-
fessional interest unaccompanied by publication ?
Does a total neglect of the great medium of print,
by which men communicate their thoughts to
others, indicate an active gathering and dis-
semination of results ? In other branches of our
own profession — in gun construction, in ship
construction, in engine building, in navigation —
there are treatises in plenty, indicating that interest
is there, that there is life; but when we come to
the waging of war there is silence, because there
we meet sleep, if not death. It was said to me
by some one : " If you want to attract officers to
the College, give them something that will help
them pass their next examination." But the
test of war, when it comes, will be found a more
searching trial of what is in a man than the verdict
of several amiable gentlemen, disposed to give
the benefit of every doubt. Then you will en-
counter men straining every faculty and every
means to injure you. Shall we then, who prepare
so anxiously for an examination, view as a " practi-
cal " proceeding, worthy of " practical " men, the
postponing to the very moment of imperative
action the consideration of how to act, how to
do our fighting, either in the broader domain of
strategy, or in the more limited field of tactics,
whether of the single ship or of the fleet ? Navies

234 Naval Administration and Warfare

exist for war; and the question presses for an
answer : " Is this neglect to master the experience
of the past, to eHcit, formulate and absorb its
principles, is it practical?" Is it "practical"
to wait till the squall strikes you before shortening
sail ? If the object and aim of the College is to
promote such study, to facilitate such results, to
foster and disseminate such ideas, can it be
reproached that its purpose is not " practical,"
even though at first its methods be tentative and
its results imperfect ?

The word " practical " has suffered and been
debased by a misapprehension of that other word
" theoretical," to which it is accurately and
logically opposed. Theory is properly defined
as a scheme of things which terminates in specu-
lation, or contemplation, without a view to practice.
The idea was amusingly expressed in the toast,
said to have been drunk at a meeting of mathe-
maticians, " Eternal perdition to the man who
would degrade pure mathematics by applying it
to any useful purpose." The word " theoretical,"
therefore, is applied rightly and legitimately only
to mental processes that end in themselves, that
have no result in action; but by a natural, yet
most unfortunate, confusion of thought, it has
come to be applied to all mental processes what-
soever, whether fruitful or not, and has trans-

Character of the Naval War College 235

ferred its stigma to them, while " practical " has
walked off with all the honors of a utilitarian age.

If therefore the line of thought, study and
reflection, which the War College seeks to pro-
mote, is really liable to the reproach that it leads
to no useful end, can result in no effective action,
it falls justly under the condemnation of being not
" practical." But it must be said frankly and
fearlessly that the man who is prepared to apply
this stigma to the line of the College effort must
also be prepared to class as not " practical " men
like Napoleon, like his distinguished opponent,
the Austrian Archduke Charles, and like Jomini,
the profuse writer on military art and military
history, whose works, if somewhat supplanted by
newer digests, have lost little or none of their
prestige as a profound study and exposition of
the principles of warfare.

Jomini was not merely a military theorist, who
saw war from the outside ; he was a distinguished
and thoughtful soldier, in the prime of life during
the Napoleonic wars, and of a contemporary
reputation such that, when he deserted the cause
of the emperor, he was taken at once into a high
position as a confidential adviser of the allied
sovereigns. Yet what does he say of strategy ?
Strategy is to him the queen of military sciences ;
it underlies the fortunes of every campaign. As

236 Naval Administration and Warfare

in a building, which, however fair and beautiful
the superstructure, is radically marred and im-
perfect if the foundation be insecure — so, if the
strategy be wrong, the skill of the general on the
battlefield, the valor of the soldier, the brilliancy
of victory, however otherwise decisive, fail of their
effect. Yet how does he define strategy, the effects
of which, if thus far-reaching, must surely be es-
teemed " practical ? " " Strategy," he said," is the
art of making war upon the map. It precedes the
operations of the campaign, the clash of arms on
the field. It is done in the cabinet, it is the work
of the student, with his dividers in his hand
and his information lying beside him." In other
words, it originates in a mental process, but it
does not end there; therefore it is practical.

Most of us have heard an anecdote of the great
Napoleon, which is nevertheless so apt to my
purpose that I must risk the repetition. Having
had no time to verify my reference, I must quote
from memory, but of substantial accuracy I am
sure. A few weeks before one of his early and most
decisive campaigns, his secretary, Bourrienne,
entered the office and found the First Consul,
as he then was, stretched on the floor with a
large map before him. Pricked over the map,
in what to Bourrienne was confusion, were a
number of red and black pins. After a short

Character of the Naval War College 237

silence the secretary, who was an old friend of
school days, asked him what it all meant. The
Consul laughed goodnaturedly, called him a fool,
and said : " This set of pins represents the Austri-
ans and this the French. On such a day I shall
leave Paris. My troops will then be in such posi-
tions. On a certain day," naming it, " I shall be
here," pointing, " and my troops will have moved
there. At such a time I shall cross the mountains,
a few days later my army will be here, the Aus-
trians will have done thus and so; and at a certain
date I will beat them here," placing a pin. Bour-
rienne said nothing, perhaps he may have thought
the matter not " practical; " but a few weeks later,
after the battle (Marengo, I think) had been
fought, he was seated with the general in his
military travelling carriage. The programme
had been carried out, and he recalled the incident
to Bonaparte's mind. The latter himself smiled
at the singular accuracy of his predictions in the
particular instance.

In the light of such an incident, the question
I would like to pose will receive of course but one
answer. Was the work on which the general was
engaged in his private office, this work of a student,
was it " practical .? " Or can it by any reasonable
method be so divorced from what followed, that
the word " practical " only appHes farther on.

238 Naval Administration and Warfare

Did he only begin to be practical when he got
into his carriage to drive from the Tuileries, or
did the practical begin when he joined the army,
or when the first gun of the campaign was fired ?
Or, on the other hand, if he had passed that
time, given to studying the campaign, in arranging
for a new development of the material of war,
and so had gone with his plans undeveloped,
would he not have done a thing very far from
" practical ? "

But we must push our inquiry a little farther
back to get the full significance of Bourrienne's
story. Whence came the facility and precision
with which Bonaparte planned the great cam-
paign of Marengo ? Partly, unquestionably, from
a native genius rarely parallelled ; partly, but not
by any means wholly. Hear his own prescription :
" If any man will be a great general, let him study."
Study what .'' " Study history. Study the cam-
paigns of the great generals — Alexander, Hanni-
bal, Caesar " (who never smelt gun-powder, nor
dreamed of ironclads) " as well as those of Tu-
renne, Frederick, and myself. Napoleon." Had
Bonaparte entered his cabinet to plan the cam-
paign of Marengo, with no other preparation than
his genius, without the mental equipment and
the ripened experience that came from knowledge
of the past, acquired by study, he would have

Character of the Naval War College 239

come unprepared. Were, then, his previous
study and reflection, for which the time of action
had not come, were they not " practical," because
they did not result in immediate action ? Would
they even have been " not practical " if the time
for action had never come to him ?

As the wise man said, " There is a time for
everything under the sun," and the time for one
thing cannot be used as the time for another.
That there is time for action, all concede; few
consider duly that there is also a time for prep-
aration. To use the time of preparation for
preparation is practical, whatever the method;
to postpone preparation to the time for action is
not practical. Our new navy is preparing now;
it can scarcely be said, as regards its material,
to be yet ready. The day of grace is still with
us — or with those who shall be the future cap-
tains and admirals. There is time yet for study;
there is time to imbibe the experience of the past,
to become imbued, steeped, in the eternal prin-
ciples of war, by the study of its history and
of the maxims of its masters. But the time of
preparation will pass; some day the time of
action will come. Can an admiral then sit down
and re-enforce his intellectual grasp of the prob-
lem before him by a study of history, which is
simply a study of past experience .'' Not so ; the

240 Naval Administration and Warfare

time of action is upon him, and he must trust to
his horse sense. The mere administration and
correspondence of a fleet leaves all too little time.
Even with captains, the administration of a
single ship of the modern type makes demands
that leave little room for the preparation of study.
Farragut bewailed this burden; and Napoleon
himself in his later days admitted that he never
did better work than in his first campaign, to
which he brought preparation indeed, but the
preparation rather of the student than that
which is commonly called " practical." The
explanation he gave was this: That in the first,
though inexperienced, he had more time for
thought, more time maturely to consider and
apply the knowledge he possessed, and which
he then owed, not to what is called " practical
work," but to the habits of study. Ten years
later he had had much more practice, but he did
not excel the early work, for which his chief
preparation lay in a course of action that is now
commonly damned as " theoretical." At the later
day the burden of administration lay too heavy,
but he had so used his time of preparation that,
though he did not improve, he was able to bear
it.

Bonapartes, doubtless, are rare; for which
very reason, perhaps, that which he found neces-

Character of the Naval War College 241

sary cannot be inexpedient for lesser men. Even
below the rank of great genius few can expect to
attain the highest degree of excellence; but we
all look forward to command, in one way or
another, and command in our profession means
liability to be called on for action, of a rare and
exceptional type, for which preparation by previous
action may not have been afforded; probably
will not. To each and all of us that test may
come, and according to our previous preparation
it may be opportunity, or it may prove to be
ruin. Let us not deceive ourselves by the un-
questionable excellence which our service has
attained in the common and peaceful line of its
daily duties. That it has so done has been due
to two causes: first, the admirable preparatory
study of the Naval Academy ; second, the oppor-
tunity for putting in practice what is there learned.
But neither in study previous, nor in practice,
is due provision being made for the stern test of
war; nor do the occupations of peace provide
other than a part, and that the smaller part, of
the equipment there needed. The College has
been founded with a view to supply the prepara-
tion; by antecedent study, and by formulation of
the principles and methods by which war may be
carried on to the best advantage. That this
purpose is " practical," seems scarcely open to

242 Naval Administration and Warfare

question. That success may be attained only after
many mistakes and long effort, is merely to say
that it shares the lot of all human undertak-
ings.

SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL
TREATMENT

SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL
TREATMENT'

October, 1902

MEMBERS of the American Historical As-
sociation, ladies and gentlemen:
The distinguished office with which you have
honored me, of being your president for a civil
year, involves the duty of making an address
upon the occasion of our annual meeting. As
time passes, and call succeeds call in an in-
creasing series, the difficulty of contributing any-
thing new to the thought of our fellow-workers
becomes ever more apparent. One can only
hope that by searching into his personal experi-
ence, by a process of self-examination, seeking to
know and to formulate that which has perhaps
been undergone rather than achieved, passively
received rather than actively accomplished, there
may emerge from consciousness something which
has become one's own; that there may be recog-

' President's address before the American Historical Asso-
ciation, December 26, 1902.

246 Naval Administration and Warfare

nized, as never before, precisely what has been
the guidance, the leading tendency, which has
characterized intentions framed, and shaped con-
clusions reached.

One of the most distinguished of our recent
predecessors in the walks of history, the late
Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton, has said
with much force:

There is only one thing we can give to another, and that
is the principles which animate our own life. Is not that the
case in private life ? Is not that the case in your relationship
with those with whom you come in contact ? Do you not
feel increasingly that the one thing you can give your brother
is a knowledge of the principles upon which your own life
rests ? It is assuredly the most precious possession that you
have. It is assuredly the one that is the most easily com-
municated.

Although by him urged with immediate refer-
ence to considerations of moral or religious effect,
these sentences have in my apprehension their
application to influence of every kind. That
which you are in yourself, that you will be to
others. Out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth in the long run speaketh ; and if you have
received the gift of utterance, more or less, you
will utter most profitably that which is your own

Suhordination in Historical Treatment 247

by birthright, or which has been made your
own by effort and reflection.

To communicate to others that which one's
self has acquired, be it much or little, be it money
or any other form of human possession, is not only
a power but a duty, now so commonly recognized,
so much a note of to-day's philosophy of Hfe —
if somewhat less of to-day's practice — as to need
no insistence here. If it be in any measure a
reproach to a man to die rich, as has been some-
what emphatically affirmed, it is still more a
reproach to depart with accumulations of knowl-
edge or experience willingly locked up in one's
own breast. For the wealth of money remains,
to receive such utilization as others may give it;
the man can not carry it away with him ; but his
thoughts and his treasures of knowledge perish
with him, if he has not had the unselfish pains
to communicate them to others before he dies.
Thus only do they become part of the common
stock of mankind; like the labors, for example,
of the great captains of industry, whose works,
even when conceived and executed in the spirit
of selfishness, remain for the benefit of posterity.

Under the pressure of the emergency to make
an address, which my momentary office requires,
such a line of thought is peculiarly forced upon
me; for it must be obvious, to all who in a general

248 Naval Administration and Warfare

way know my past profession, that the study of
history has been to me incidental and late in life,
which is much the same as to say that it has
been necessarily superficial and limited. It is
not possible, under my conditions, to claim
breadth and depth of historical research. I can
not be expected to illustrate in my own person
the protracted energy, the extensive delving into
materials hitherto inaccessible, the vast accumula-
tion of facts, which have been so forcibly de-
scribed by the late Lord Acton, in his inaugural
lecture on the Study of History, as the necessary
equipment of the ideal historian to-day. Had I
attempted this, beginning when I did, I must
have died before I lifted pen to put to paper;
and in necessary consequence it follows that
upon this, as upon topics closely related to it,
I am as unfit to address you as Lord Acton was
most eminently qualified by his immense stores
of acquirement, the most part of which he un-
fortunately took away with him.

I am therefore forced to introspection, if I am
to say anything the least worthy of the recog-
nition which you have too generously accorded
me by your election. I have to do for myself
that which but for this call I probably never
should have attempted; namely, to analyze and
formulate to my own consciousness the various

Subordination in Historical Treatment 249

impressions — the " unconscious cerebration," to
use a current phrase sufficiently vague for my
purpose — which have formed my mental experi-
ence as a writer of history, and have probably
been reflected in my treatment of materials. Do
not, however, fear that I propose to inflict upon
you a mental autobiography. What I have so
far said has been explanatory of shortcomings,
and apologetic, — at least in intention ; I trust,
also, in impression. Being now finally delivered
of it, I hope to get outside and clear of myself
from this time forth, and to clothe such thought
as I may give you in the impersonal terms which
befit an attempted contribution to a perennial
discussion, concerning the spirit which should
inform the methods of historical writing.

There are certain fundamental factors upon
which I shall not insist, because they need only
to be named for acceptance. They are sum-
marized in thoroughness and accuracy of knowl-
edge; intimate acquaintance with facts in their
multitudinous ramifications; mastery of the
various sources of evidence, of the statements,
usually conflicting, and often irreconcilable, of
the numerous witnesses who have left their
testimony. The critical faculty, so justly prized,
is simply an incident to this ascertainment of
facts. It plays the part of judge and jury in a

250 Naval Administration and Warfare

trial; not establishing the facts, but pronouncing
upon the evidence. It needs not therefore to be
separately classified, as something apart, but is
truly embraced under the general expression of
" knowledge," exact and comprehensive. In
like manner the diligence and patience required
for exhaustive examination of witnesses, though
proper to name, form no separate class. They
are, let us say, the lav?yers, the advocates, whose
business is to bring fully out the testimony by
which the verdict shall be decided; but, like
the critical equipment, they simply subserve the
one bottom purpose of clear and demonstrated
knowledge.

Knowledge thus established is, I apprehend,
the material with which the historian has to deal;
out of which he has to build up the artistic creation,
the temple of truth, which a worthy history should
aim to be. Like the material of the architect it
will be found often refractory; not because truth
is frequently unpleasant to be heard, especially
by prepossessed ears, but because the multiplicity
of details, often contradictory, not merely in
appearance but in reahty, do not readily lend
themselves to unity of treatment. It becomes
thus exceedingly difficult to present numerous
related truths in such manner as to convey an
impression which shall be the truth. Not only

Subordination in Historical Treatment 251

may the formless mass of ill-arranged particulars
affect the mind with the sense of confusion, like
that produced by a room crowded with inhar-
monious furniture; not only may it be difficult
to see the wood for the trees; but there may be
such failure in grouping that the uninstructed
reader may receive quite erroneous impressions
as to the relative importance of the several inci-
dents. As I have had occasion to say, in reviewing
a military history, fidelity of presentation does
not consist merely in giving every fact and omitting
none. For the casual reader emphasis is essential
to due comprehension: and in artistic work
emphasis consists less in exaggeration of color
than in the disposition of details, in regard to
foreground and background, and the grouping of
accessories in due subordination to a central idea.
Of the difficulty here existing history bears
sufficient proof. Not merely the discovery of
new evidence, but different modes of presenting
the same facts, give contradictory impressions of
the same series of events. One or the other is not
true; neither perhaps is even closely true. With-
out impeaching the integrity of the historian, we
are then forced to impeach his presentment, and
to recognize by direct logical inference that the
function of history is not merely to accumulate
facts, at once in entirety and in accuracy, but to

252 Naval Administration and Warfare

present them in such wise that the wayfaring man,
whom we now call " the man in the street," shall
not err therein. Failing here, by less or more,
the historian, however exhaustive his knowledge,
by so far shares the fault of him who dies with
his treasures of knowledge locked in his own brain.
He has not perfectly communicated his gifts and
acquirements to his brethren.

This communication is not a mere matter of
simple narrative, nor even of narrative vivid and
eloquent. All of us know histories which by the
amplitude of their details and the chronological
sequence of occurrences produce in the end much
the same vague generality of impression that is
received from watching a street movement from
a window. Here and there an incident out ot
the common, yet often of the most trivial in itself,
catches the attention, perhaps sticks in the
memory; but of the entirety nothing remains
but a succession of images substantially identical,
to which there is neither beginning nor end.
Such may be a valid enough conception of the
life of a city street, or of the general external
aspect of an historic generation. Such to me is
the interest of Froissart. Having the gift of
pictorial utterance, he passes before you a succes-
sion of vivid scenes, concerning any one of which
it is quite immaterial whether it be directly true

Subordination in Historical Treatment 253

to history. It is true to nature. You have realized
on the outside one dominant aspect of the life
of that bustling, seemingly inconsequent genera-
tion, through true portrayal and frequent itera-
tion; but there is neither beginning, middle, nor
end, only surface ebullition. Take the incidents
of the same period selected and grouped by
Stubbs in his Constitutional History, and you see
order emerging from chaos, the continuous thread
of life which was before Froissart, which underran
his time — though it does not appear in his
narrative — and which flows on to our own day.
In this interrelation of incidents, successive or
simultaneous, history has a continuity in which
consists its utility as a teaching power, resting
upon experience. To detect these relations in
their consecutiveness, and so to digest the mass
of materials as to evolve in one's own mind the
grouping, the presentation, which shall stamp
the meaning of a period upon the minds of readers,
with all the simple dignity of truth and harmony,
answers to the antecedent conception by the
architect of the building, into which he will put
his stones and mortar. Facts, however exhaustive
and laboriously acquired, are but the bricks and
mortar of the historian; fundamental, indis-
pensable, and most highly respectable, but in
their raw state they are the unutilized possession

254 Naval Administration and Warfare

of the one, or at most of the few. It is not till
they have undergone the mental processes of the
artist, by the due selection and grouping of the
materials at his disposal, that there is evolved a
picture comprehensible by the mass of men.
Then only are they in any adequate sense com-
municated, made part of the general stock. Work
thus done may be justly called a creation; for
while the several facts are irreversibly independent
of the master's fabrication or manipulation, the
whole truth, to which they unitedly correspond,
is an arduous conception. To attain to it, and
to realize it in words, requires an effort of analysis,
of insight, and of imagination. There is required
also a gift of expression, as often baffled as is the
attempt of the painter to convey to others his
conception of an historic scene, which, indeed, he
may find difficulty in clearly realizing to his own
mental vision. This process, however, does not
create history; it realizes it, brings out what is
in it.

Of such artistic presentation it is of course a
commonplace to say that essential unity is the
primary requirement. It must be remembered,
however, that such unity is not that of the simple,
solitary, unrelated unit. It is organic. Like the
human body, it finds its oneness in the due rela-
tion and proportion of many members. Unity

Subordination in Historical Treatment 255

is not the exclusion of all save one. The very
composition of the word — unity — implies multi-
plicity; but a multiplicity in which all the many
that enter into it are subordinated to the one
dominant thought or purpose of the designer,
whose skill it is to make each and all enhance the
dignity and harmony of the central idea. So
in history, unity of treatment consists not in
exclusion of interest in all save one feature
of an epoch, however greatly predominant, but
in the due presentation of all; satisfied that,
the more exactly the relations and proportions
of each are observed, the more emphatic and
lasting will be the impression produced by the
one which is supreme. For instance, as it is now
trite to observe, amid all the abundance of action
in the Iliad, the singleness, the unity, of the
poet's conception and purpose causes the mighty
deeds of the several heroes, Greek or Trojan,
to converge ever upon and to exalt the supreme
glory of Achilles. It would have been quite
possible, to most men only too easy, to narrate
the same incidents and to leave upon the mind
nothing more than a vague general impression of
a peculiar state of society, in which certain rather
interesting events and remarkable characters had
passed under observation — Froissart, in short.
I speak rather from the result of my reflections

256 Naval Administration and Warfare

than from any conscious attempt on my own
part to realize my theories in an historic
work; but I conceive that it would minister
essentially to the intrinsic completeness of the
historian's equipment, and yet more be important
to his usefulness to others — his usefulness as a
teacher — if, after accumulating his facts, he
would devote a considerable period to his pre-
liminary work as an artist. I mean to the mental
effort which I presume an artist must make, and
an historian certainly can, to analyze his subject,
to separate the several parts, to recognize their
interrelations and relative proportions of interest
and importance. Thence would be formed a
general plan, a rough model; in which at least
there should appear distinctly to himself what is
the central figure of the whole, the predominance
of which before teacher and reader must be
preserved throughout. That central figure may
indeed be the conflict of two opposites, as in the
long struggle between freedom and slavery, union
and disunion, in our own land; but the unity
nevertheless exists. It is not to be found in
freedom, nor yet in slavery, but in their conflict
it is. Around it group in subordination the
many events, and the warriors of the political
arena, whose names are household words among
us to this day. All form part of the great progress

Subordination in Historical Treatment 257

as it moves onward to its consummation; all
minister to its effectiveness as an epic; all en-
hance — some more, some less — the majesty,
not merely of the several stages, but of the entire
history up to that dire catastrophe — that fall
of Troy — which posterity can now see impend-
ing from the first. This, in true history, is present
throughout the whole; though the eyes of many
of the chief actors could neither foresee it in their
day nor lived to behold. The moral of fate
accomplished is there for us to read ; but it belongs
not to the end only but to the whole course, and
in such light should the historian see and maintain
it. Can it be said with truth that the figure of
Lady Hamilton throws no backward shadow,
no gloom of destiny, over the unspotted days
of Nelson's early career ? A critic impatiently
observed of my life of the admiral that this effect
was produced. I confess that upon reading this
I thought I had unwittingly achieved an artistic
success.

It should scarcely be necessary to observe that
artistic insistence upon a motive does not consist
in reiteration of it in direct words, in continual
pointing of the moral which the tale carries.
That true art conceals its artfulness is a cheap
quotation. It is not by incessantly brandishing
Achilles before our eyes, or never suffering him

258 Naval Administration and Warfare

to leave the stage, that his preeminent place is
assured in the minds of the audience. Neverthe-
less, the poet's sense of his own motive must be
ever present to him, conscious or subconscious,
if his theme is not to degenerate from an epic
to a procession of incidents; and this is just the
danger of the historian, regarded not as a mere
accumulator of facts, but as an instructor of men.
In a reviev^r of a recent biography occurs the follow-
ing criticism : " The character and attainments of
the man himself " — who surely is the appointed
centre in biography — " are somewhat obscured
by the mass of detail. This is indeed the worst
danger incurred by the modern historian. Where
his predecessor divined, he knows, and too often
is unable to manage his knowledge. To consult
State papers is not difficult; to subordinate them
to the subject they illustrate is a task of exceeding
delicacy, and one not often successfully accom-
plished. The old-fashioned historian thought it
a point of honor to write in a style at once lucid
and picturesque. The modern is too generally
content to throw his material into an unshapely
mass; " content, in short, with teUing all he knows.
As in war not every good general of division can
handle a hundred thousand men, so in history
it is more easy duly to range a hundred facts than
a thousand. It appears to me that these obser-

Subordination in Historical Treatment 259

vations, of the validity of which I am persuaded,
are especially necessary at the present day. The
accuracy of the historian, unquestionably his right
arm of service, seems now in danger of fettering
itself, not to say the historian's energies also, by
being cumbered with over-much serving, to for-
getfulness of the one thing needed. May not
some facts, the exact truth about some matters,
be not only beyond probable ascertainment, but
not really worth the evident trouble by which
alone they can be ascertained ?

I once heard of a seaman who, when navigating
a ship, pleased himself in carrying out the cal-
culated definement of her position to the hundredth
part of a mile. This, together with other refine-
ments of accuracy, was perhaps a harmless amuse-
ment, only wasteful of time; but when he pro-
ceeded to speak of navigation as an exact science,
he betrayed to my mind a fallacy of appreciation,
symptomatic of mental defect. I speak with the
utmost diffidence, because of my already con-
fessed deficiency in breadth and minuteness of
acquirement; but I own it seems to me that some
current discussions not merely demonstrate their
own improbability of solution, but suggest also
the thought that, were they solved, it really would
not matter. May we not often confound the
interest of curiosity with the interest of importance.

260 Naval Administration and Warfare

Curiosity is well enough, as a matter of mental
recreation; truth is always worth having; but
in many cases it may be like the Giant's Cause-
way to Dr. Johnson — worth seeing, but not
worth going to see. It is troublesome enough to
handle a multitude of details so as to produce
clearness of impression ; but to add to that diffi-
culty a too fastidious scrupulosity as to exhausting
every possible source of error, by the accumulation
of every imaginable detail, is to repeat the naviga-
tor's error by seeking to define an historical posi-
tion within a hundredth of a mile. Neither in
history nor in navigation do the observations,
and what is called the personal equation, justify
the expectation of success; and even could it be
attained, the question remains whether it is worth
the trouble of attaining. Lord Acton's " Study
of History " is in this respect a kind of epic,
dominated throughout in its self-revelation by
the question why so learned a man produced so
little. May not the answer be suggested by the
vast store of appended quotations lavished upon
the several thoughts of that one brief essay ?

It appears to me sometimes that the elaboration
of research predicated by some enthusiastic dev-
otees of historical accuracy, who preach accuracy
apparently for its own sake, is not unlike that of
the mathematicians who launched a malediction

Subordination in Historical Treatment 261

against those who would degrade pure mathe-
matics by applying it to any practical purpose.
Mathematics for mathematics alone, accuracy
only to be accurate, are conceptions that need
to be qualified. An uneasy sense of this is already
in the air. Since writing these words I find an-
other reviewer complaining thus : " The author
is content simply to tell facts in their right order,
with the utmost pains as to accuracy, but with
hardly any comment on their significance. Of
enthusiasm there is only that which specialists
are apt to feel for any fact, in spite of its value."
There is a higher accuracy than the weighing of
scruples ; the fine dust of the balance rarely turns
the scale. Unquestionably, generalization is unsafe
where not based upon a multitude of instances;
conclusion needs a wide sweep of research; but
unless some limit is accepted as to the number
and extent of recorded facts necessary to infer-
ence, if not to decision, observation heaped upon
observation remains useless to men at large. They
are incapable of interpreting their meaning. The
significance of the whole must be brought out by
careful arrangement and exposition, which must
not be made to wait too long upon unlimited
scrutiny. The passion for certainty may lapse into
incapacity for decision; a vice recognized in mili-
tary life, and which needs recognition elsewhere.

262 Naval Administration and Warfare

I have likened to the labor of the artist the
constructive v?ork of the historian, the work by
which he converts the raw material, the discon-
nected facts, of his own acquirement to the use
of men ; and upon that have rested the theory of
historical composition, as it appears to my own
mind. The standard is high, perhaps ideal; for
it presupposes faculties, natural gifts, which we
are prone to class under the term of inspiration, in
order to express our sense of their rarity and
lofty quality. This doubtless may be so; there
may be as few historians born of the highest order
as there are artists. But it is worse than useless
to fix standards lower than the best one can frame
to one's self; for, like boats crossing a current,
men rarely reach as high even as the mark at
which they point. Moreover, so far as my con-
ception is correct and its development before you
sound, it involves primarily an intellectual process
within the reach of most, even though the fire of
genius, of inspiration, may be wanting. That
informing spirit which is indispensable to the
highest success is the inestimable privilege of
nature's favored few. But to study the facts
analytically, to detect the broad leading features,
to assign to them their respective importance,
to recognize their mutual relations, and upon
these data to frame a scheme of logical presenta-

Subordination in Historical Treatment 263

tion — all this is within the scope of many whom
we should hesitate to call artists, and who yet are
certainly capable of being more than chroniclers,
or even than narrators.

In fact, to do this much may be no more than
to be dryly logical. It is in the execution of the
scheme thus evolved that the difficulty becomes
marked ; like that of the artist who falls short of
reproducing to the eyes of others the vision
revealed to himself. Nevertheless, simply by
logical presentation the keenest intellectual grati-
fication may be afforded — the gratification of
comprehending what one sees but has not hitherto
understood. From this proceeds the delineation
of the chain of cause and effect; the classification
of incidents, at first sight disconnected, by a
successful generalization which reveals their es-
sential unity; the exposition of a leading general
tendency, which is the predominant characteristic
of an epoch. These processes do not, however,
end in mere gratification; they convey instruc-
tion, the more certain and enduring because of
their fascinating interest.

To conceive thus the work of the historian is
perhaps natural to my profession. Certainly,
from this same point of view, of artistic grouping
of subordinate details around a central idea, I
have learned to seek not only the solution of the

264 Naval Administration and Warfare

problems of warfare, but the method of its history ;
whether as it concerns the conduct of campaigns,
which we call strategy, or in the direction of
battles, which we define tactics, or in the design
of the individual ship of war. Unity of purpose
— exclusiveness of purpose, to use Napoleon's
phrase — is the secret of great military successes.
In employing this word "exclusiveness," which re-
duces unity to a unit. Napoleon was not weighing
scrupulously the accuracy of his terms. He was
simply censuring the particular aberration of
the officer addressed, who was so concerned for
a field of operations not immediately involved as
to allow his mind to wander from the one pre-
dominant interest then at stake. But, though
exaggerated, the term is not otherwise incorrect,
and the exaggeration is rather that of emphasis
than of hyperbole. Other matters may need to be
considered, because of their evident relations to
the central feature; they therefore may not be
excluded in a strict sense, but equally they are
not to usurp the preeminence due to it alone. In
so far its claim is " exclusive," and their own
exists only as ministering to it.

The military historian who is instructed in the
principles of the art of war finds, as it were im-
posed upon him, the necessity of so constructing
his narrative as to present a substantial unity in

Subordination in Historical Treatment 265

effect. Such familiar phrase as the " key of the
situation," the decisive point for which he has
been taught to look, upon the tenure of which
depends more or less the fortune of war, sustains
continually before his mind the idea, to which
his treatment must correspond, of a central
feature round which all else groups; not only
subordinate, but contributive. Here is no vague
collocation of words, but the concrete, pithy ex-
pression of a trained habit of mind which domi-
nates writing necessarily, even though uncon-
sciously to the writer. So the word " combina-
tion," than which none finds more frequent use
in military literature, and which you will recall
means to make of two one, reminds him, if he
needs to think, that no mere narrative of separate
incidents, however vivid as word painting, fulfils
his task. He must also show how all lead up to,
and find their several meanings in, a common
result, of purpose or of achievement, which
unifies their action. So again " concentration,"
the watchword of military action, and the final
end of all combination, reminds him that facts
must be massed as well as troops, if they are to
prevail against the passive resistance of indolent
mentality; if they are to penetrate and shatter
the forces of ignorance or prejudgment, which
conservative impression has arrayed against them.

266 Naval Administration and Warfare

It is not in the coloring, but in the grouping,
that the true excellence of the mlhtary historian
is found; just as the battle is won, not by the
picturesqueness of the scene, but by the disposi-
tion of the forces. Both the logical faculty and
the imagination contribute to his success, but the
former much exceeds the latter in effect. A cam-
paign, or a battle, skilfully designed, is a work
of art, and duly to describe it requires something
of the appreciation and combinative faculty of
an artist; but where there is no appeal over the
imagination, to the intellect, impressions are
apt to lack distinctness. While there is a certain
exaltation in sharing, through vivid narrative, the
emotions of those who have borne a part in some
deed of conspicuous daring, the fascination does
not equal that wrought upon the mind as it traces
the sequence by which successive occurrences
are seen to issue in their necessary results, or
causes apparently remote to converge upon a
common end. Then understanding succeeds to
the sense of bewilderment too commonly pro-
duced by military events, as often narrated.
Failing such comprehension, there may be fairly
discerned that " it was a famous victory; " and
yet the modest confession have to follow that
" what they fought each other for " — what the
meaning of it all is — "I can not well make out."

Subordination in Historical Treatment 267

No appointed end is seen to justify the bloody
means.

This difficulty is not confined to military his-
tory. It exists in all narrative of events, which
even in the ablest hands tends to degenerate into
a brilliant pageant, and in those of less capable
colorists into a simple procession of passers-by;
a more or less commonplace street scene to
recur to a simile I have already used. It is the
privilege simply of the mihtary historian that,
if he himself has real understanding of the matters
he treats, they themselves supply the steadying
centre of observation; for the actions are those
of men who had an immediate recognized purpose,
which dictated their conduct. To be faithful to
them he must not merely tell their deeds, but
expound also their plan.

The plan of Providence, which in its fulfilment
we call history, is of wider range and more com-
plicated detail than the tactics of a battle, or the
strategy of a campaign, or even than the policy
of a war. Each of these in its own sphere is an
incident of history, possessing an intrinsic unity
of its own. Each, therefore, may be treated after
the fashion and under the limitations I have sug-
gested; as a work or art, which has a central
feature, around which details are to be grouped
but kept ever subordinate to its due development.

268 Naval Administration and Warfare

So, and so only, shall the unity of the picture be
successfully preserved; but when this has been
done, each particular incident, and group of
incidents, becomes as it were a fully wrought and
fashioned piece, prepared for adjustment in its
place in the great mosaic, which the history of
the race is gradually fashioning under the Divine
overruling.

I apprehend that the analogy between military
history and history in its other aspects - — political,
economical, social, and so on — is in this respect
closer than most would be willing at first to
concede. There is perhaps in miUtary history
more pronounced definiteness of human plan,
more clearly marked finality of conclusion, and
withal a certain vividness of action, all of which
tend to enforce the outlines and emphasize the
unity of the particular subject. A declaration of
war, a treaty of peace, a decisive victory, if not
quite epoch-making events, are at least prominent
milestones, which mark and define the passage
of time. It is scarcely necessary to observe, how-
ever, that all these have their very definite ana-
logues in that which we call civil history. The
Declaration of Independence marks the consum-
mation of a series of civil acts; the surrender
of Cornwallis terminates a military record. The
Peace of Westphalia and the British Reform

Subordination in Historical Treatment 269

Bill of 1832 are alike conspicuous indications of
the passing of the old and the advent of the new.
But yet more, may we not say that all history is
the aggressive advance of the future upon the
past, the field of collision being the present. That
no blood be shed does not make the sapping of
the old foundations less real, nor the overthrow
of the old conditions less decisive. Offence and
defence, the opposing sides in war, reproduce
themselves all over the historic field. The con-
servative, of that which now is, holds the successive
positions against the progressive, who seeks
change ; the resultant of each conflict, as in most
wars, is a modification of conditions, not an
immediate reversal. Total overthrow is rare;
and happily so, for thus the continuity of con-
ditions is preserved. Neither revolution, nor yet
stagnation, but still advance, graduated and
moderate, which retains the one indispensable
salt of national well-being. Faith; faith in an
established order, in fundamental principles, in
regulated progress.

Looking, then, upon the field of history thus
widened — from the single particular of military
events, which I have taken for illustration —
to embrace all the various activities of mankind
during a given epoch, we find necessarily a vast
multiplication of incident, with a corresponding

270 Naval Administration and Warfare

complication of the threads to which they severally
belong. Thus not only the task is much bigger,
but the analysis is more laborious; while as this
underlies unity of treatment, the attainment of
that becomes far more difficult. Nevertheless
the attempt must be made; that particular feature
which gives special character to the period under
consideration must be selected, and the relations
of the others to it discerned, in order that in the
preeminence of the one and the contributory
subordination of the others artistic unity of con-
struction may be attained. Thus only can the
mass of readers receive that correct impression
of the general character and trend of a period
which far surpasses in instructive quality any
volume of details, however accurate, the signif-
icance of which is not apprehended. An example
of the thought which I am trying to express is
to be found in the brief summaries of tendencies
which Ranke, in his History of England in the
seventeenth century, interposes from time to
time in breaks of the narrative. This is not, I
fancy, the most artistic method. It resembles
rather those novels in which the motives and
characters of the actors are explained currently
instead of being made to transpire for themselves.
Nevertheless the line of light thus thrown serves
to elucidate the whole preceding and succeeding

Subordination in Historical Treatment 271

narrative. The separate events, the course and
character of the several actors, receive a meaning
and a value which apart from such a clew they do
not possess.

I conceive that such a method is applicable to
all the work of history from the least to the
greatest; from the single stones, if we may so
say, the particular limited researches, the mono-
graphs, up to the great edifice, which we may
imagine though we may never see, in which all
the periods of universal history shall have their
several places and due proportion. So coor-
dinated, they will present a majestic ideal unity
corresponding to the thought of the Divine Archi-
tect, realized to His creatures. To a consum-
mation so noble we may be permitted to aspire,
and individually to take pride, not in our own
selves nor in our own work, but rather in that
toward which we minister and in which we beheve.
Faith, the evidence of things not seen as yet, and
the needful motive force of every truly great
achievement, may cheer us to feel that in the
perfection of our particular work we forward the
ultimate perfection of the whole, which in its
entirety can be the work of no one hand. It may
be, indeed, that to some one favored mind will be
committed the final great synthesis ; but he would
be powerless save for the patient labors of the

272 Naval Administration and Warfare

innumerable army which, stone by stone and
section by section, have wrought to perfection
the several parts; while in combining these in
the ultimate unity he must be guided by the same
principles and governed by the same methods
that have controlled them in their humbler tasks.
He will in fact be, as each one of us is, an in-
strument. To him will be intrusted, on a larger
and final scale, to accomplish the realization of
that toward which generations of predecessors
have labored; comprehending but in part, and
obscurely, the end toward which they were tend-
ing, but yet building better than they knew because
they built faithfully.

THE STRENGTH OF NELSON

THE STRENGTH OF NELSON'

August, 1905

WITH a temperament versatile as that of
Nelson, illustrated in a career full of
varied action, it is not easy to know how to regard
its subject, in brief, so as to receive a clear and
accurate impression; one which shall preserve
justice of proportion, while at the same time giving
due emphasis and predominance to the decisive
characteristics. Multiplicity of traits, lending
itself to multiplicity of expression, increases the
difficulty of selection, and of reproducing that
combination which really constitutes the effective
force and portrait of the man. The problem is
that of the artist, dealing with a physical exterior.
We can all recall instances of persons, celebrated
historically or socially, in whom the prominence
of a particular feature, or a certain pervading
expression, causes all portraits to possess a
recognizable stamp of likeness. As soon as

' This paper was read on the hundredth anniversary of the
Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1905, before the Victorian
Club, of Boston, U. S. A.

276 Naval Administration and Warfare

the pictured face is seen we identify the original
without hesitation. There are others in whom
the mobility of countenance, the variations de-
pending upon feehng and expression, quite over-
power in impression the essential sameness pre-
sented by features in repose.

Great indeed must be the difficulties of the
artist, or the writer, who has to portray the man
capable, within a half-hour, of such diverse moods
as Wellington witnessed in his one only inter-
view with Nelson. The anecdote is too familiar
for reproduction here. Less well known, probably,
or less remembered, is a similar testimony borne
by two officers. Captains Layman and Sir Alex-
ander Ball, who served with him under varying
circumstances.

One day, after tea in the drawing-room at Merton, Lord
Nelson was earnestly engaged in conversation with Sir Samuel
Hood. Mr. Layman observed to Sir Alexander that Lord
Nelson was at work, by his countenance and mouth; that he
was a most extraordinary man, possessing opposite points of
character — little in little things, but by far the greatest man
in great things he ever saw; that he had seen him petulant in
trifles, and as cool and collected as a philosopher when sur-
rounded by dangers in which men of common minds with
clouded countenance would say, " Ah ! what is to be done ? "
It was a treat to see his animated and collected countenance
in the heat of action. Sir Alexander remarked this seeming
inconsistency, and mentioned that after the Battle of the Nile

The Strength of Nelson 277

the captains of the squadron were desirous to have a good
likeness of their heroic chief taken, and for that purpose
employed one of the most eminent painters in Italy. The
plan was to ask the painter to breakfast, and get him to begin
immediately after. Breakfast being over, and no preparation
being made by the painter, Sir Alexander was selected by the
other captains to ask him when he intended to begin ; to which
the answer was, " Never." Sir Alexander said he stared,
and they all stared, but the artist continued : " There is such
a mixture of humility with ambition in Lord Nelson's coun-
tenance that I dare not risk the attempt 1 "

Contrast with such an one the usual equable
composure of Washington or Wellington, and
the difficulty of a truthful rendering is seen; but
reflection reveals therein likewise the intensely
natural, spontaneous, impulsive character, which
takes hold of our loves, and abides in affectionate
remembrance.

In such cases how can there but be marked
diversities of appearance in the attempted repro-
ductions by this or that man, painter or writer .''
Not only will the truthfulness of the figured face
depend upon the fleeting mood of the sitter; the
aptitude of the artist to receive, and to penetrate
through the mask of the instant, is an even greater
factor. Both the one and the other will enter into
the composition of the resultant portrait; for as,
on the one hand, the man shows himself as he

278 Naval Administration and War jar e ■

for the moment is, so, on the other, the power to
see and to express that which is shown depends
upon the revelation to the artist; a revelation
due as much to his own insight as to the visible
thing before him. The miracle of Pentecost lay
not only in the gifts of speech bestowed upon the
Apostles, but in the power of every man to hear
in that tongue, and in that tongue only, to which
he is born; to see with the spiritual vision which
he has received, or to which he may have grown.
In this respect portrayal by pen will not differ
from portrayal by pencil or by brush. The
man who attempts to depict in words a character
so diverse in manifestation as that of Nelson
will reflect from what he sees before him that
aspect of the man with which he himself is most
in touch. The writer of military sympathies will —
must — give predominance to the military quali-
ties. Despite his eff"orts to the contrary, they will
make the deepest impress, and will be most
certainly and conspicuously reproduced. And to
a degree this will accord with the truth; for
above all, undoubtedly, Nelson was a warrior.
But he was also much more, and in virtue of
that something else he survives, and is transmitted
to us as — what shall I say ? — as Nelson ; there
is no other word. He is not a type; still less does
he belong to a class. He is simply himself — the

The Strength of Nelson 279

man Nelson; a man so distinct in his individuality,
that he has thus imposed himself on the con-
sciousness and recollection of a great nation. He
rests there, simply himself, and no other; and
no other is he, nor stands near him. I say not
that he is higher or lower, greater or less, than
any other. I do not, at least now, analyze his
qualities, nor seek to present such an assembly
of them as shall show why the impress of in-
dividuality is thus unique. I only draw attention
to the fact that this is so; that Nelson now lives,
and is immortal in the memory of his kind, not
chiefly because of what he did, but because in
the doing and in the telling, then and now, first
and last, men have felt themselves in the presence
of a personality so strong that it has broken
through the barriers of convention and reserve
which separate us one from another, and has
placed itself in direct contact with the inner
selves, not of contemporaries only, but of us who
never saw him in the body. We have not only
heard of him and his deeds. We know him as
we do one with whom we are in constant inter-
course.

This is of itself an extraordinary trait. Thus
to make a man known, to reveal a personality, is
what Boswell did for Johnson; but he accom-
plished this literary marvel of portraiture by the

280 Naval Administration and Warfare

most careful and minute record of doings and
sayings. His is a built-up literary prodigy, re-
sembling some of those striking Flemish portraits,
which not only impress by their ensemble, but
stand inspection under a magnifying glass. But
what Boswell did for Johnson, Nelson has done
for himself, and in quite other fashion. He is
revealed to us, not by such accumulation of
detail, but by some quality, elusive, perhaps not
to be detected, by reason of which the man him-
self insensibly transpires to our knowledge in
his strength and in his weakness. We know
him, not by what his deeds or his words signify;
but through his deeds and words the inner spirit
of the man continually pierces, and, while we
read, envelops us in an atmosphere which may
be called Nelsonic. Such certainly seemed to
me the effect upon myself in a year given to his
letters, to his deeds, and to his recorded words.
I found myself in a special environment, stimu-
lating, exalting, touching; and while we confess
that there are morbid symptoms attendant upon
the writing of biography, tending to distort vision,
and to confuse the sense of proportion, faults
which the reader must appreciate — the writer
cannot — there can be no mistake about the
moral effect produced, and the outburst of this
Trafalgar Day proves it to be not limited to the

The Strength of Nelson 281

biographer. The reserve which for the most of
us cloaks each man's secret being from the knowl-
edge of those nearest him among his contem-
poraries, casts no such impenetrable veil over
the personality of this man whom we never saw —
who died just one hundred years ago this day.
We have with him an acquaintance, we feel
from him an influence, which we have not with,
nor from, one in a score of those whom we meet
daily.

Many Lives of Nelson have been written, but
no one of them marked with the artistic skill
and untiring diligence which Boswell brought
to his task. A singular proof of the latter's
combined genius and care, which I do not think
is always appreciated, is to be found in the fact
that the portrait of Johnson is surrounded by a
gallery of minor portraits, as real and living as
his own, though duly subordinated in impression
to the central figure of the group. This is indeed
the triumph of the great artist. He has, so to
say, succeeded beyond himself, and beyond his
intentions, simply because he is great. In the
way of portraiture he touches nothing that he
does not quicken and adorn. The same certainly
cannot be said for those who have transmitted to
us the companions of Nelson, in their relations
to their chief. Yet we know Nelson as well as

282 Naval Administration and Warfare

we know Johnson, and more usefully, despite every
disadvantage in his limners. The spell of his
personality has compelled them to reproduce him;
and its power — its magic, I might say — is to
be found in that influence exerted upon them.
In Boswell's Johnson we have the vivid repro-
duction of a man of the past; a study complete,
interesting, instructive, but not to a reader of
to-day influential beyond the common teachings
of biography. In Nelson, who died but twenty
years later, we have a living inspiration. He
presents a great heroic standard, a pattern. We
set ourselves at once to copy him; not because,
in the record of his acts, we have received an
ordinary suggestion or warning, but because heart
answers to heart. The innate nobility of theman's
ideals, which transpired even through, and in, the
lamentable episode which sullied his career, uplifts
us in spite of ourselves, and of all that was amiss
in him. The jewel shines, even amid defilement.
It certainly cannot be claimed that Nelson's un-
flinching professional tenacity is nobler than John-
son's brave struggle against his mental depression
and numerous bodily infirmities; his life unstained,
though without Puritanic afi"ectation. But, as a
present force, Johnson is dead, Nelson is alive.
Nelson is no mere man of the past. Not his
name only, but he himself lives to us; still speaks,

The Strength of Nelson 283

because there was in him that to which man can
never die, while he remains partaker of the Divine
nature. It is but a few days since that I received
a letter from a junior officer of the British Navy,
expressing the wish that all young officers might
be ordered to master the career of Nelson, because
of the upHfting power which he himself had
found in the ideals and actions of the hero.

What is the secret of this strange fascination,
which has given Nelson his peculiar place, by
which it may be said of him, as of some few other
worthies of the past : " He being dead yet
speaketh." It certainly is not merely in the
standards which he professed, even although his
devotion to them continually was manifested,
not in word only, but in deed; yea, and in the
hour of death. The noblest of all, the dying
words, " Thank God I have done my duty," is
no monopoly of Nelson's. You may count by
scores the men of English-speaking tradition, in
Great Britain and America, who have brought
as single-minded a purpose to the service of the
" stern daughter of the voice of God," and have
followed her as unflinchingly through good and
ill. But how many of them who have departed
exercise a conscious influence upon the minds
of the men of to-day ? Their deeds and examples
doubtless have gone to swell that sum total of

284 Naval Administration and Warfare

things, by which the world of our generation is
the better for the Uves of the myriads who have
lived unknown and are forgotten; but their
influence, their present, direct, personal, uplifting
force on men now alive, in how many instances
can you point to it ? And to what one other,
among the heroes of Great Britain, from whom
it is so generally distributed that it may fitly be
called national ? Despite the Nile and Trafalgar,
there may be several who have more radically
and permanently affected the destinies of the
Empire. We are not here concerned with such
analytic computations, or with estimates of indirect
consequences which the doer of the deeds could
by no possibility have foreseen. If such there
be, what one among them evokes to-day the
emulative affection and admiration which is the
prerogative of Nelson .? Whence comes this ?
Grant even the cumulative dramatic force, the
immense effectiveness of the double utterances,
so closely following each other, " England expects
every man to do his duty," and " Thank God,
I have done my duty," you have advanced but a
step towards the solution of the question. Why
is Nelson still alive, while so many other sons
of duty are dead ? What prophetic power, power
to speak for God and for man, was in this man,
that such enduring speech should come forth

The Strength of Nelson 285

from his life; that he, being dead, is still speak-
ing?

It is not permitted to man so to search the heart
of his fellow as to give a conclusive reply to such
a question ; yet it is allowable and appropriate
to seek so far to appreciate one like Nelson as
at least to approach somewhat nearer towards
understanding the secret of his character and of
its power. The homage to duty as the supreme
motive in life, and the strong conviction that
there are objects worthier of effort than money-
getting and ease, were characteristics possessed
in common with many others by Nelson. But,
while I speak with diffidence, I feel strongly that
the mode of tenure was somewhat different in
him and in them. The recognition of duty, and
of its high obligation, is impressed upon most of
us from without. We have been taught it, have
received it by the hearing of the ear, from others
to whom in like manner it has been imparted by
those who went before them. It is, so to say, a
transmitted inheritance — "in the air;" perhaps
not to quite such an extent as might be desired.
We render it a tribute which is perfectly sincere,
but still somewhat conventional. This condition
is not to be despised. The compelling power of
accepted conventions is enormous; but, hke
much religious faith, such attention to duty is

286 Naval Administration and Warfare

not founded on the individual bottom, but depends
largely on association, for which reason it will be
found more highly developed in some professions,
because it is the tone of the profession. Un-
questionably, in many individuals the thought
is so thoroughly assimilated as to become the
man's very own, as hard to depart from as any
ingrained acquired habit; and to this we owe the
frequency of its manifestations in nations where
the word itself has received a dignity of recognition
which sets it apart from the common vocabulary —
deifies it, so to say.

All this is very fine. It is superb to see human
nature, in man or in people, lifting itself up above
itself by sheer force of adhesion to a great ideal;
to mark those who have received the conception
elevated, not through their own efforts, but by
force of association, like the tonic effect of an
invigorating atmosphere. But our hard-won
victories over ourselves cannot by themselves
alone make us that which by nature we are not.
Nature has been suppressed in its evil, and
upon its restless revolt good enthroned; but the
evil lives still and rebels. The palace is kept and
held by a strong man armed ; but ever in danger
that a stronger than he, whom we call Nature,
shall return in force and retrieve his past defeat.
It was finely said of Washington, by one who

The Strength of Nelson 287

knew him intimately — Gouverneur Morris —
" Control his passions ! Yes ; and few men
have had stronger to control. But many men
have controlled their passions, so as not to do
that to which they were impelled. But where
have you known one who, like him, always,
under whatever conditions, could do, and did,
what the duty of the moment required, despite
fatigue, or distaste, or natural repulsion." The
writer who made this comparison had moved
amid all the scenes of dire distress and anxiety
that marked the American War of Independence,
and had personal acquaintance with the chief
actors. This is the innate positive quality, not
the acquired negative self-control, battling with
self. I doubt if most of us stop to realize the
full force of the word " innate," which slips
glibly enough from our tongues without apprecia-
tion of its signiiicance. Inborn; this is not
nature controlled, but nature controlling; not
the tiger, or the ape, or the sloth, held by the
throat, but the man himself in the fulness of his
powers exercising his natural supremacy over
himself. Such was duty to Nelson; a mistress,
not that compelled obedience, but that attracted
the devotion of a nature which intuitively recog-
nised her loveliness, and worshipped. Like the
hearers at Pentecost, he recognized in her voice

288 Naval Administration and Warfare

the tongue to which he was born; he saw her —
yes, despite his one great fall, we may say it —
he saw her fairer than the daughters of men.

Stern Lawgiver! Thou dost wear

The Godhead's most benignant grace;

Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.

A natural character, we have all felt the at-
tractiveness of such, the attractiveness of truth
and beauty; but when, to such a nature, is added
nobility as well, we have one of the rare com-
binations which compels homage. Nelson was
eminently natural, affectionate, impulsive, ex-
pansive; but it is this singular gift, this peculiar
recognition of duty, with another I shall mention,
which has set him upon his pedestal, given him
the niche which only he can fill. In the spirits
of his people he has found a nobler Westminster
Abbey than that of which he dreamed. But,
you may ask, how do you demonstrate that he
had this gift ? Alas, I am not a Boswell ; I wish
I were, and that there survived the records of
conversations with which I, or another, could
reconstruct his image, as Boswell drew Johnson.
Yet when a career opens and closes upon the same
keynote, we may be sure of the harmonious whole

The Strength of Nelson 289

— of which, indeed, traces enough remain to
confirm our assurances. You know the two
stories of childhood handed down to us. The
brothers starting for school after Christmas
holidays, driven back by the weather, and started
again with the father's mandate, " You may return
if it is necessary; but I leave it to your honor
not to do so unless it is really dangerous to pro-
ceed." It seemed dangerous, and one was for
returning; but the Nelson said, " No, it was left
to our honor." Not the word "duty," no; but
the essence of duty, the look out from self, the
recognition of the something external and higher
than the calls of the body. In one so young —
he was but twelve when he went to sea some time
after this — it is Nature which speaks, not an
acquired standard. In later years, in terms
somewhat fantastic, he said he beheld ever a
radiant orb beckoning him onward. Honor
he called it, the twin sister — rather let us say
the express image — in which duty, regarding
as in a glass, sees herself reflected. Then, again,
there is the story of stealing the fruit from the
schoolmaster's pear-tree — a trivial enough school-
boy prank, risking the penalties of detection which
his comrades dared not face. Neither duty nor
honor goes to such a feat in its nakedness; but
the refusal to eat the fruit, the proud avowal that

290 Naval Administration and Warfare

he went only because the others feared, bears
witness to the same disregard of personal advan-
tage, the same determination of action by con-
siderations external to self, the same eye to the
approval of the consciousness — of the conscience
— which spoke in the signal at Trafalgar, and
soothed the dying moments by the high testimony
within : not, " I have won renown ; " not " I
have achieved success;" but, "I have done my
duty." He was not indifferent to success; he
was far from indifferent to renown. " If it be a
sin to covet glory," he once quoted, " then am
I the most offending soul alive." But the solemn
hour which gives the validity of an oath to the
statement of the dying, assuredly avouches to
us that then the man, as once the child, spoke out
the true secret of his being — the tongue into
which he was born.

And in this also is the secret, not only of his
own devotion to duty, but of the influence of his
personality upon others; both in the infancy of
his professional career, and now in the maturity
of his immortal renown. What he thus possessed
he possessed naturally, positively, aggressively,
and therefore contagiously. He had root in
himself, to use a familiar expression; and the
life which was thus no mere offshoot of conven-
tion, but his very own, gave itself out abundantly

The Strength of Nelson 291

to others, multiplying himself. He gave out by
example; he gave out by words, uttered, indeed,
expressly, yet so casually that the impression
resembles the fleeting glimpse of an interior,
caught through the momentary tossing aside of
a curtain; he gave out through the heroic atmos-
phere of self-devotion which he bore about him;
he gave out by cordial recognition of excellence
in others. Any other man who did his duty,
whether comrade or subordinate, was to him a
fellow worshipper at the shrine ; his heart went out
to him, whether in failure or in success, if only
the will was there. No testimony is clearer or
more universal than that to his generosity in
appreciation of others ; and it was seen, not only
in recognition of achievement already accom-
plished, but in the confident expectation of
achievement yet to be effected. The original form
of the Trafalgar signal, spoken by himself, " Nel-
son confides that every man will do his duty,"
was no mere casual utterance. It summed up
the conviction and habit of a lifetime. As the
words, "Thank God, I have done my duty,"
were his dying words personally, so those just
quoted may be said to have been his last words
professionally. Indeed, he himself said as much,
for when they had been communicated to the
fleet he remarked, " Now I can do no more. We

292 Naval Administration and Warfare

must trust (confide) to the great Disposer of all
events." His great career ended when that
signal had been read and acknowledged.

Because in himself so trustworthy, he trusted
abundantly; and all of us know the stimulus of
feeling ourselves trusted, of looking forward with
certainty to just appreciation of good work done.
" I am well aware," wrote one of his younger
captains, " of the good construction which your
Lordship has ever been in the habit of putting
on circumstances, although wearing the most
unfavorable appearances. Your Lordship's good
opinion constitutes the summit of my ambition
and the most effective spur to my endeavors."
" I am pleased," writes another, " that an op-
portunity is offered for showing my gratitude in
a small degree for his almost fatherly kindness."
In a letter of instructions to a captain about to
encounter some perplexing and critical conditions,
after prescribing for several circumstances that
may arise, he concludes, in the case of the unfore-
seen, " You must then act as your judgment may
direct you, and / am sure that will be very proper."
If delinquency actually occurred, as he conceived
it had in the case of Sir Sidney Smith, his wrath
had all the fierceness of trust betrayed, for he was
a man impatient and of strong passions ^ but
otherwise doubts of another's doing his duty did

The Strength of Nelson 293

not occur to him. His confidence in himself,
in his own self-devotion and capacity, made him
trustful of others, and inspired them with devotion
to the service and to the country, for his sake, and
because they saw it in him. A captain who met
him for the first time just before Trafalgar, and
who fell in the battle, wrote home, " I have been
very lucky with most of my admirals, but I really
think the present the pleasantest I have met
with. He is so good and pleasant that we all wish
to do what he likes, without any kind of orders."
This was the clear reflection of his own spirit,
begot of his own confidence in others, because
he met them and trusted them as himself. Dutiful,
probably, in any event, as imitators of him they
were more so. He expected in others what he
felt in himself, and diffused around him the
atmosphere of energy, zeal, and happiness in
endeavor, which was native to himself. " He
had in a great degree," wrote a contemporary
who had known him from boyhood, " the valuable
but rare quality of conciliating the most opposite
tempers, and forwarding the public service with
unanimity, among men not of themselves disposed
to accord." Yes; but the unanimity was not
that of accordant opinion, but of a common
devotion to a common object, before which
differences subsided; to duty, seeing in others a

294 Naval Administration and Warfare

like devotion, a like purpose to do their best.
This spirit Nelson shed about him; with this he
inspired others in his day, and still does in our
own. It was the contagion of his personality,
continuous in action, and ever watchful against
offence, and even against misunderstanding. " My
dear Keats," he wrote to a captain whose worn-
out ship was incorrigibly slow when speed was
most desirable, " I am fearful you may think
that the Superb does not go as fast as I could wish.
I would have you to be assured that I know and
feel that the Superb does all which is possible for
a ship to accomplish; and I desire that you will
not fret." " My dear CoUingwood, I shall come
out and make you a visit; not, my dear friend,
to take your command from you, but to consult
how we may best serve our country by detaching
a part of this large force." St. Vincent's testimony
here is invaluable: "The delicacy you have
always shown to senior officers is a sure presage
of your avoiding by every means in your power
to give umbrage." He wrote himself, " If ever I
feel great, it is in never having, in thought, word,
or deed, robbed any man of his fair fame."

Instances of this delicate consideration for the
feelings of others, dictated often by appreciation
of their temperaments as well as of their circum-
stances, could be multiplied. But we read them

The Strength of Nelson 295

imperfectly, missing their significance, if we see
in them mere kindliness of temper; for, though
kindly. Nelson was irritable, nervously sensitive
to exasperating incidents, at times impatient to
petulance, often unreasonable in complaint. Open
expression of these feelings, evidences of tempera-
ment, flit often across his countenance, traversing
the unity of the artist's vision and embarrassing
his conception. Nelson was not faultless; but
he was great. It is not, indeed, unprecedented
to find such foibles in connection with much
kindliness; they are easy concomitants in a warm
temper. But this appreciation and consideration
were with him no mere kindliness of temper,
though that entered into them. They were the
reflection outward of that which he knew and
experienced within. In his followers he saw
himself. To use the quaint expression of Sweden-
borg, he projected around him his own sphere.
Because duty, zeal, energy inspired him, he saw
them quickening others also; and the homage
he intuitively paid to those qualities themselves
he gave to their possessors whom he saw around
him. Each man, unless proved recreant, thus
stood transfigured in the light which came from
Nelson's self This spontaneous recognition took
form in an avowed scheme of life and action,
which rested, consciously or unconsciously, upon

296 Naval Administration and Warfare

the presumption in others of that same devotion
to duty, that same zeal to perform it, and, in
proportion to the individual's capacity, the same
certainty of achievement which he found in
himself. " Choose them yourself," he replied to
the First Lord of the Admiralty, when asked to
name his officers. " You cannot go amiss.
The same spirit actuates the whole profession;
you cannot choose wrong." The man to whose
lips such words rise spontaneous simply attributes
to others what he finds within, and what by
experience he has found himself able to transfer.
Out of the abundance of the heart he speaks,
and by his words he is justified.

Closely connected with this characteristic, as
is warp with woof, interwoven manifestation
indeed of a quality essentially one and the same,
is a trait in Nelson upon which I myself have
been inclined to lay an emphasis which I do not
find in other writers. So far as analysis can draw
lines between the essential features of a particular
character, the one to which I now allude is pecul-
iarly military in its effectiveness; whereas devotion
to duty, and confidence in others, may rather
be called personal. At least they are not to be
attributed exclusively to the military professions,
much as these undoubtedly have gained from
the insistence, approaching monopoly, with which

The Strength of Nelson 297

in them the idea of duty has been enforced, as
supreme among the incentives of the soldier. To
the Happy Warrior, Duty does not bar devotion
to other virtues, except in rivalry with herself.
Courage, obedience, fortitude, Duty recognizes
them all and admits them; but not as equals.
They are but parts of herself; the children,
not the mother. Differing one from another, in
her they find that vehich unites and consecrates
them all. But w^hile from all Duty exacts much,
there are gifts which she cannot confer; and
among them is one found in few, but conspicuous
in Nelson.

In my own attempt to deal with his
career, I spoke of this as Faith; and the word
was criticized as inadequate and misleading,
apparently because I was thought to use it in a
narrowly religious sense. Now, I do not think
that Nelson would have rejected religious trust
in God as a prime motive in his professional action;
but certainly, to my mind, if Jesus Christ spoke
with only the authority of a man, he expressed
a profound philosophy when He placed faith at
the foundation of all lofty and successful action,
religious or other. But while faith has a recognized
technical meaning in theology, it has a much
wider practical application; and when called
confidence, or conviction, it is more easy to under-

298 Naval Administration and Warfare

stand its value in the perplexities, the doubtful
circumstances, which go to make all life, but
especially the life of the mihtary leader, responsible
for great issues, such as fell to Nelson's determina-
tion. Then conviction, when possessed, becomes
indeed the solid substance of things which the
man cannot see with his eyes, nor know by ordinary
knowledge. It is the bed-rock upon which action
rears its building, and stands four square against
all the winds that blow. It is not so much a
possession as that the man is possessed by it,
and goes forward; not knowing whither he goes,
but sure that, wherever the path leads, he does
right to follow. As Nelson trusted his fellows,
so he trusted the voice within, and for the same
reason; in both he recognized the speech to
which he was born.

Most of us know what it is to be tossed to and
fro by hesitations, and thereby too often deterred
from action, or weakened in it. Can any one who
has felt this inward anguish, and the feebleness
of suspense, and at last has arrived at a working
certainty, doubt the value and power of a faculty
which reaches such certainty, reaches conviction,
by processes which, indeed, are not irrational,
but yet in their influence transcend reason .? How
clearly does reason sometimes lead us step by
step to a conclusion so probable as to be worthy

The Strength of Nelson 299

of being called a practical certainty, and there
leave to our unaided selves the one further step
to acceptance; the step across the chasm which
yawns between conviction and knowledge, between
faith and sight. This we have not the nerve to
take because of the remaining doubt. Here
reason, the goddess of to-day, halts and fails.
The leap to acceptance, which faith takes, and
wins, reason cannot make, nor is it within her
gift to man. The consequent weakness and
failure are more conspicuous in military life than
in any other, because of the greatness of the
hazards, the instancy and gravity of the result,
should acceptance bring disaster. The track of
military history is strewn with the dead reputa-
tions and the shattered schemes which have
failed to receive the quickening element of con-
viction.

Of all inborn qualities, this is one of the
strongest, as it is the rarest; for, let it be marked,
such conviction consists, not in the particular
conclusion reached, but in the dominating power
with which it is held. This puts out of court
all other considerations before entertained, — but
now cast aside, — and acts ; acts as though no
other conclusion were possible, or ever had been.
This to me has always invested with the force of
a most profound allegory the celebrated incident

300 Naval Administration and Warfare

of Nelson putting the glass to his blind eye, when
looking at the signal which contravened his
conviction. The time for hesitations had passed;
there had" been a time for discussion, but
there remained now but one road to success.
Conviction shuts its eyes to all else; the man
who admits doubts at such an instant is lost. It
is again single-mindedness, the single eye, the
undoubting, revealed amid new surroundings.
Conviction is one; doubts many. At the moment
of this subhme exhibition, the words of the by-
stander depict Nelson as one breathing inspira-
tion : " Though the fire of the enemy had slack-
ened, the result had certainly not declared in
favor on either side. Nelson was sometimes
animated, and at others heroically fine in his
observations. ' It is warm work, and this day
may be the last for any of us at a moment; but
mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thou-
sands.' " " Leave off action ! D me if I

do." The man was possessed, in the noble sense
of the word.

With less dramatic force, but no less telling and
decisive effect, the same power of conviction mani-
fested itself in a peculiarly critical moment of
his career, near the close of his hfe. In May,
1805, he left his station in the Mediterranean to
pursue an allied fleet to the West Indies. He had

The Strength of Nelson 301

done this without other authority than his own
inferences from the data before him; yielding, to
quote a French admirer, to one of the finest
inspirations of his genius. The West Indies
reached, he failed to get touch of the enemy, owing
to misinformation given him; and they started
back to Europe, leaving no certain trace of where
they were gone. Opinions and rumors clamored
and clattered around him; certainty could not
be had. He has recorded the situation himself
in words which convey, more forcibly than my
pen can, what is the power of conviction. " So
far from being infallible, like the Pope, I believe
my opinions to be very fallible, and therefore I
may be mistaken that the enemy's fleet has gone
to Europe; but I cannot bring myself to think
otherwise, notwithstanding the variety of opin-
ions which different people of good judgment
form." " My opinion is firm as a rock, that
some cause has made them resolve to proceed
direct for Europe." Can conviction use stronger
words ?

And what is conviction but trust; trust in the
unseen ? Trust not irrational, not causeless, not
unable to give some account of itself; but still
short of knowledge, ignorant in part, deriving its
power, not from what it sees, but from an unseen
source within. To deny the existence and strength

302 Naval Administration and Warfare

of such a faculty in some favored men is to shut
one's eyes to the experience of history, and of
daily life around us; a blindness, or a perversity,
quite as real as it would be to ignore the shilly-
shally vacillations of the multitude of clever men,
who never find in themselves the power to act upon
their opinions, if action involves risk, because
opinion receives not that inward light which we
called conviction, confidence, trust, faith. In
Nelson this confidence, like his devotion to duty,
and his trust in others, envelops his record, like
an atmosphere which one insensibly feels, but the
power of which is realized only by stopping to
reflect. Lord Minto, who had known him inti-
mately from the very beginnings of his greatness,
and who knew the navy too, wrote after his death :
"The navy is certainly full of the bravest men;
but there was a sort of heroic cast about Nelson
that I never saw in any other man, and which
seems wanting to the achievement of impossible
things, which became easy to him." Not that
he had not to encounter perplexities and doubts
in plenty. There is little singularity in con-
viction where there is nothing to shake it. None
of us have trouble in admitting that two and two
make four. But as Nelson's actions are followed,
whatever the obscurity of the conditions, one finds
oneself always in presence of a spirit as settled in

The Strength of Nelson 303

Its course, when once decided, as though doubt
were not possible.

Our quest has been the strength of Nelson. I
find It In the inborn natural power to trust; to
trust himself and others; to confide, to use his
own word. Whether it is the assurance within,
which we call conviction, or the assurance without,
which we call confidence, in others or In one's
own action, this is the basic principle and motive
force of his career, as Duty was its guiding light
and controlling standard. I make less of his
clear perceptions, his sound judgment, of the
general rational processes which illuminated his
course, as I also do of the courage, fortitude,
zeal, which illustrated his deeds. All these
things, valuable as they are, he shared with others.
He possessed them, possibly, in an unusual
degree, but still in common with many to whom
they could never bring success, because unas-
soclated with that indefinable something, which,
like a yet undiscovered element In nature, or an
undetected planet, we recognize by its workings,
and may to it even attribute a name, though
unable as yet adequately to describe. Genius,
we not Infrequently say; a word which, not yet
defined, stands a mute confession of our ignorance
wherein It consists. As I conceive it, there is no
genius greater than faith; though it may well be

304 Naval Administration and Warfare

that in so saying we have but given another name
v^^ith no nearer approach to a definition.

In a celebrated funeral oration, vv^hich we all
know, the speaker says : " I come to bury Caesar,
not to praise him." It is for no such purpose that
men observe this day; for the man, the memory
of whom now moves his people, is not one to be
buried, but to be praised and kept in everlasting
remembrance. True, he needs not our praises,
but we need to praise him for our own sakes.
The Majesty on high is exalted far above all
praise, yet it is good to praise Him ; for the essence
of praise is not the homage of the lips, but the
recognition of excellence; and recognition, when
real, elevates, ennobles. It fosters an ideal
which tends to induce imitation, and to uplift
by sheer force of appreciation and association.
And as with the Creator, so with the excellent
among his creatures. We need not ignore their
failings, or their sins, although an occasion like
the present is not one for dwelling upon these;
but as we recognize in them men of like frailities
with ourselves, we yet perceive that, despite all,
they have not only done the great works, but have
been the great men whom we may justly reverence.
That they in their weakness have had so much
in common with us gives hope that we may yet
have something in common with them in their

The Strength of Nelson 305

strength. It is the high grace and privilege of a
man like Nelson that he provokes emulation
rather than rivalry, imitation rather than com-
petition. To extol him uphfts ourselves. As it
was when he lived on earth, so it is now. His life
is an inheritance to children's children; of his
own people first, but after them of all the nations
of the earth.

THE VALUE OF THE PACIFIC CRUISE
OF THE UNITED STATES FLEET, 1908

Prospect and Retrospect

Prospect: The Scientific American, December 7,

1907.
Retrospect: Collier's Weekly, August 29, 1908.

THE VALUE OF THE PACIFIC CRUISE
OF THE UNITED STATES FLEET, 1908.

Prospect

THE projected movement of an American
fleet of sixteen battleships, with attendant
smaller vessels, from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coast of the United States is an event not only
important, both from the professional and national
point of vievs^, but striking to the imagination.
It carries in itself certain elements of grandeur.
It is therefore not surprising that it should have
attracted particular notice from the press; but
the effect upon the imagination of several journals
has been such as to approach the border line of
insanity. A measure designed upon its face to
reach a practical solution of one of the most urgent
naval problems that can confront a nation having
two seaboards, extremely remote the one from
the other, has been persistently represented as
a menace to a friendly power — Japan; and
so effectively has this campaign of misrepresenta-
tion been carried on, so successfully has an ob-

310 Naval Administration and Warfare

vious and perfectly sufficient reason for this cruise
been ignored in favor of one less probable, and,
so far as knowledge went, non-existent, that
certain of the press of Japan, we are told, have
echoed the cry.

Not only so, but European journals, notably
some in Great Britain, among them certain which
are incessant in their warnings against Germany,
and conscious that the whole distribution of the
British fleet has of late been modified, with the
object of increasing the battleship force quickly
available for the North Sea, where their only
enemy is Germany, nevertheless affect to depre-
cate the dispatch of a United States fleet from
its Atlantic to its Pacific coast, where it will be
four thousand miles from Japan, against the two
or three hundred which separate England and
Germany. A new British naval base has been
established on the North Sea. The naval ma-
noeuvres of this autumn (1907), in which have
taken part twenty-six battleships and fifteen to
twenty armored cruisers, that is, over forty ar-
mored vessels, with other cruisers and torpedo
boats in numbers, have been in the North Sea;
one coast only of which is British as our Pacific
coast is ours. The Naval Annual for this year,
a publication conservative in tone as well as
high in authority, discusses the strategy of the

Cruise 0} U. S. Atlantic Fleet 311

North Sea with unhesitating reference to Germany.
I take from it the statement that by May, 1908,
86 per cent, of the British battleship strength will
be concentrated in or near home waters. Yet,
in the face of all this, the rulers of Great Britain
and Germany, at this very moment of my writing,
find no difficulty in exchanging peaceful assur-
ances, the sincerity of which we have no good
reason to doubt. Have we also forgotten that,
upon the Emperor William's famous telegram
to Kruger, a British special squadron was
ordered into commission, ready for instant move-
ment ? Whether a retort or a menace, even so
overt a measure, in home waters, gave rise to
no further known diplomatic action. We Ameri-
cans are attributing to other people a thinness
of skin, suggestive of an over-sensitiveness in
ourselves which it was hoped we had outgrown.

Let it be said at once, definitely and definitively,
that there is in international law, or in inter-
national comity, absolutely no ground of offence
to any state, should another state, neighbor or
remote, see fit to move its navy about its own
coasts in such manner as it pleases. Whatever
Germany may think of the new distribution of
the British navy, she says nothing, but will silently
govern her own measures accordingly. The
statesmen of Japan, who understand perfectly

312 Naval Administration and Warfare

the proprieties of international relations, know
this well, and doubtless retain their composure;
but the result of the action of certain of the Amer-
ican press has been to stir up popular feeling
in both countries, by the imputation to the United
States government of motives and purposes which
cannot be known, and which prima facte are
less probable than the object officially avowed.
Whether this endeavour to rouse ill blood has
been intentional or not, is of course known only
to the editors; but grave ground for suspecting
even so unworthy a motive as to injure the national
administration is fairly to be inferred from such
a paragraph as I shall here quote, from a New
York journal of October 6. My chief object in
quoting, however, is not to impugn motives,
however reasonable such construction, but to
emphasize the essential characteristic of the
coming movement of our fleet:

" Suppose that soon after the New Orleans
riots, when relations between the United States
and Italy were ' strained,' the American fleet had
been sent on a practice cruise to the Mediterranean.

" Suppose that soon after the Venezuela mes-
sage, Mr. Cleveland had ordered the whole Amer-
can fighting naval strength to take a practice
cruise off Nova Scotia or Jamaica."

Such action, in either supposed case, would have

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 313

been wantonly insolent and aggressive, calculated
to provoke hostilities, and such as no statesman
vrould take, unless he had already determined to
force war, or saw it looming large on the horizon;
as when the British fleet was sent to Besika Bay
in 1878. The insolence, aggression, and provo-
cation, however, would have been the demon-
stration off the coast of the nation with whom
diplomatic difficulty existed. Occurring when
these innuendoes did, in the midst of the virulent
campaign of imputation of warlike purposes
against the Administration, the inference is irre-
sistible that there was deliberate intention to
parallel the sending of our fleet from our one
coast to our other to a measure as offensive as
those named. The distinguishing characteristic
of the movement now proiected, rrom " the in ^
ternational point or view, is that it is not in the
nature ot a demonstration, peaceful or hostile,
oir the coast of any other state, mucnless~mt
that bi one witli whom our relations are asserted
by the press to be delicate. Not every man in
the "?ffiet,"'however7''ttJtrfd'"- detect the fallacy.
It is a maxim of law that intention can only be
inferred from action. So wild an insinuation,
in the columns of a journal distinguished for in-
telligence, can, so far as the action shows, be
attributed only to a willingness to mislead, or to
a loss of head.

314 Naval Administration and Warfare

In pursuing the next aspect of this cruise to
which I purpose to devote attention, I am led
again to quote the same journal:

" We are asked to believe that this expedition
to the Pacific is a mere ' practice cruise.' He
must be a miracle of innocent credulity who be-
lieves it. What observant men perceive in this
dangerous situation is a cataclysm trained and
bridled for Theodore Roosevelt to bestride and
run amuck."

The last sentence is not necessary to my pur-
pose; but I preserve it, partly for that gem of
metaphor, " a cataclysm trained and bridled,"
and partly for the directness of the charge against
the President of preparing conditions that must
issue in war.

For the rest, if to believe in the obvious and
adequate motive of practice for the fleet is to be a
" miracle of innocent credulity," such I must ad-
mit myself to be; and I do so heartily. I am not
in the councils of either the government or the
Navy Department. I have neither talked with
nor heard from any person who from official
position could communicate to me any knowl-
edge of the facts. My own information has been
confined throughout to the newspapers. Shortly
after the purpose to send the fleet became known,
and counter agitation to be made, I had occasion

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 315

to write to a British naval friend; and I said to
him then that, while I had no clue to the motives
of the Administration, it seemed to me that a
perfectly sufficient reason was the experience to
be gained by the fleet in making a long voyage,
which otherwise might have to be made for the
first time under the pressure of war, and the dis-
advantage of not having experienced at least
once the huge administrative difficulties connected
with so distant an expedition by a large body of
vessels dependent upon their own resources.
By " own resources " must be understood, not
that which each vessel carries in herself, but
self-dependence as distinguished from dependence
on near navy yards — the great snare of peace
times. The renewal of stores and coal on the
voyage is a big problem, whether the supply
vessels accompany the fleet or are directed to
join from point to point. It is a problem of
combination, and of subsistence; a distinctly mil-
itary problem. To grapple with such a question
is as really practical as is fleet tactics or target
practice.

To this opinion I now adhere, after having
viewed the matter in the light of such historical
and professional thought and training as I can
bring to it. Other reasons may have concurred;
of this I know nothing. The one reason, practice,

316 Naval Administration and Warfare

is sufficient. It is not only adequate, but impera-
tive. The experiment — for such it is until it
has become experience — should have been made
sooner rather than be now postponed. That
it was not sooner attempted has been, probably,
because the growth of the navy has only now
reached the numbers, sufficiently homogeneous,
to make the movement exhaustively instructive.
The word practice covers legitimately many
features of naval activity, which differ markedly
and even radically from one another, though
all conducive to the common end — proficiency.
I may perhaps illustrate advantageously by a re-
mark I have had occasion to make elsewhere,
upon two theories concerning the summer practice
cruises of the Naval Academy. There were —
probably still are — those who advocated spend-
ing most of the allotted time in quiet, contracted,
waters, following a prearranged routine of prac-
tical drills of various descriptions, which would
thus be as little as possible disturbed by weather
or similar impediment. Others favored the
practice vessels putting out at once to sea for a
voyage of length, amounting often to five or six
thousand miles, in which must necessarily be
experienced many kinds of weather and other
incidents, reproducing the real life of the sea, and
enforcing such practical action as the variable

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 317

ocean continually exacts. It is evident that
these conceptions, though opposite, are not con-
trary to each other, but complementary; and a
moment's thought shows that under another
phase they reappear in every fleet, if its active
life is thoughtfully ordered with a view to full
efficiency. It is imperative that a fleet, for a
large proportion of the year, seek retired waters
and relatively equable weather, for the purposes
of drill with the guns; from the slow graduated
instruction of the gunners, the deliberate firing
at a stationary target, and from a ship either at
rest or slowly moving, up through successive ac-
cretions of speed of ship, and of discharges, until
the extreme test is reached of fast steaming, and
firing with the utmost quickness with which the
guns can be handled. In like manner the ma-
noeuvring of a body of several ships in rapid
movement, changing from one formation to
another, for the ultimate purposes of battle,
must progress gradually, in order that com-
manding officers and their under-studies may
gain, not only ability, but confidence, based
upon habit; upon knowledge of what their own
ships can do, and what they may expect from
the other vessels about them. Ships in battle order
must keep at distances which, relatively to the
speed maintained, are short; dangerously short,

318 Naval Administration and Warfare

except where compensated by the sureness of
handling based on long practice. It is clear also
that alterations in the personnel of a fleet, which
are of frequent occurrence, make constant tacti-
cal drills additionally necessary.

But when all this — and more not here specified
— has been accomplished, whether at the Naval
Academy or for the fleet, what has been done
but lay the necessary foundation upon which to
rear the superstructure of the real life of the
profession ? There remains still to fulfil the
object — very different from mere practice, though
dependent upon it — which alone justifies the
existence of a navy. The pupil of the Naval
Academy passes naturally and imperceptibly into
the routine of life of the service by the simple
incident of being ordered to a sea-going ship; the
single ship, the cruiser, gains her sufficient experi-
ence by the mere fact of staying at sea ; but a fleet
tied to its home ports, or to the drill ground, does
not undergo, and therefore does not possess,
the fulness of fleet life. Not only are the in-
terruptions numerous and injurious; not only
does the easily reached navy yard sap the habit
of self-reliance; but out in the deep, dependent
upon itself alone and for a long period, there
await a fleet on a distant voyage problems so
different in degree from those of a vessel alone

Cruise oj U. S. Atlantic Fleet 319

as practically to be different in kind. Multiply
any kind of difficulty by sixteen, and you have
passed from one order of administration to another.
The movement of the United States battle
fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast is
in the highest sense practical, because it is pre-
cisely the kind of movement which the fleet of
any nation may, and usually will, be required to
make in war. It is further practical, because the
United States has a Pacific as well as an Atlantic
coast, and has not a navy large enough to be
divided safely between them. The question is
at least debatable, whether for the near future
the Pacific is not the greater centre of world
interest; as it certainly, with regard to our own
military necessities, is one of greater exposure than
the Atlantic. Like France, with her Mediter-
ranean and Atlantic shores, the United States is
in the painful military dilemma of being liable
to attack on one side while the fleet is on the
other; but our distance to be covered is so much
greater than that of France, that the position is
vastly more embarrassing. A fleet of battleships
leaving Toulon, full coaled and victualed, may
reach Brest or Cherbourg without renewing the
fuel and stores in its holds; but a fleet leaving
New York or Norfolk for San Francisco has
upon its hands a most serious administrative

320 Naval Administration and Warfare

problem, and one which no accuracy of gun-
fire, no skill in tactics, can meet. It is in fact
the problem of Rozhestvensky, to use an illustra-
tion particularly apt, because recent. Can our
navy in such case expect from the weak states
of South America the facility for recoaling, etc.,
which was liberally extended to the Russian
admiral, to the somewhat amazement of the naval
profession, and to the just indignation of Japan ?
It is an old saying that an army, like a snake,
moves on its belly. This is little less true of a
navy. In the foremost naval man of modern times,
in Nelson, we, according to our several prepos-
sessions, see the great strategist, or the great
tactician, or the great fighting man; but the
careful student of his letters realizes that, under-
lying all, is the great administrator, who never
lost sight or forethought for the belly on which
his fleet moved. The unremitting solicitude
for the food essential to the health of his crews;
the perpetual alertness to seize opportunity, in-
dicated by such casual note, at sea : " Finished
discharging storeship No. — ; " the slipping into
Tetuan to fill with water, because little progress
toward Gibraltar could be made against the
current and temporary head wind; the strong
self-control, holding down his constitutional im-
petuosity to move, till sure that all has been done

Cruise 0} U. S. Atlantic Fleet 321

to make movement far reaching, as well as ac-
curate in direction; the whole culminating at
the end of his life in a wide sweeping movement
across the Atlantic, back to Gibraltar, and thence
to Brest, a period of three months — about equiv-
alent to that required for our projected transfer
— during which he was never embarrassed about
stores because always forehanded; that is the
way — speed, not haste — in which wars are
won. It was, and was recognized at the time to
be, a magnificent instance of the mobility which
is the great characteristic of navies as fighting
bodies ; not the mobility which consists in getting
an extra half-knot on a speed trial with picked
coal and firemen, but that which loses no time
because it never misses opportunity. At the end,
when he came off Brest, out of the dozen ships
with him, all but two were turned over to the
admiral there commanding, ready for any call;
to blockade or to fight. Of the two, one, worn
out structurally, he had retained from the first
chiefly because of her value as a fighting unit, due
to an exceptional captain; the other, his own
flagship, had been over two years from a home
port, yet within a month of arrival sailed again for
his last battle. Compared to these its antece-
dents, Trafalgar is relatively a small matter.
The example is for all time. Incidental con-

322 Naval Administration and Warfare

ditions have changed since then, but the essential
problem remains. Steamers may not find in a
calm, or in an unprofitable head wind, the pro-
pitious moment for clearing a storeship, or run-
ning into a near port to fill with water; but the
commander-in-chief may find imposed upon him
the consideration : Where should we fill with coal,
and to what extent beyond the bunker capacity,
in order to make the successive coalings, and the
necessary stretches from point to point, most
easy and most rapid ? What distribution of these
operations will make the total voyage shortest
and surest ? What anchorages may be available
outside neutral limits, should neutral states con-
sider coal renewal and other refreshment an
operation of war not to be permitted within their
jurisdiction ? What choice is there among these
anchorages, for facility due to weather ? If driven
to coal at sea, where will conditions be most pro-
pitious ? For concrete instances: How much of
the wide and shoal estuary of the La Plata is
within neutral jurisdiction ? Is the well-known
quietness of the Pacific between Valparaiso and
the equator such that colliers can lie alongside
while the ships hold their course ? If so, at what
speed can they move ? Then the mere operation
of transferring the coal, or other stores, under
any of these circumstances is done more rapidly

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 323

the second time than the first; and the third
than the second. At what points of the voyage
should additional colliers join, having reference,
not only to the considerations above mentioned,
but also to the ports whence they sail, that the
utmost of their cargo may go into the fleet and
the least be expended for their own steaming ?
It is always well to consider the worst difficulties
that may be met. From the north tropic on the
one side to the same latitude on the other, the
whole voyage of an American fleet will be in
foreign waters, except when on the ocean common.
Upon what hospitality can It count in war ?

I hold it to be impossible that a fleet under
a competent commander-in-chief and competent
captains — not to mention the admirable junior
official staffs of our navy, of highly trained officers
in the prime of life — can make the proposed
voyage once, even with the advantages of peace,
without being better fitted to repeat the operation
in war. No amount of careful pre-arrangement
in an office takes the place of doing the thing
itself. It is surely a safe generalization, that no
complicated scheme of action, no invention, was
ever yet started without giving rise to difficulties
which anxious care had failed to foresee. If
challenged to point out the most useful lesson
the fleet may gain, it may be not unsafe to say:

324 Naval Administration and Warfare

its surprises, the unexpected. If we can trust
press reports, surprise has already begun in the
home water. The fleet apparently has not been
able to get ready as soon as contemplated. If
so, it will be no small gain to the government
to know the several hitches; each small, but
cumulative.

In my estimation, therefore, the matter stands
thus : In the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke — than
whom I know no sounder authority, because while
non-professional he has been for a generation a
most accurate observer and appreciative student
of military and naval matters — the United
States navy now stands second in power only to
that of Great Britain; but it is not strong enough
to be divided between the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts. Both are part of a common country; both
therefore equally entitled to defence. It follows
inevitably that the fleet should be always ready,
not only in formulated plan, but by acquired ex-
perience, to proceed with the utmost rapidity —
according to the definition of mobility before
suggested — from one coast to the other, as
needed. That facility obtained, both coasts are
defended in a military sense. By this I do not
mean that an enemy may not do some flying
injury — serious injury — but that no large oper-
ation against the coasts of the United States

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 325

can prosper unless the enemy command the sea;
and that he cannot do, to any effect, if within
three months a superior United States force can
appear. Rozhestvensky took longer; but could
he have smashed Togo, as Togo did him, what
would have been the situation of Japan, for all
the successes of the preceding fourteen months ?
Evidently, however, the shorter the transit from
the Pacific to the Atlantic, the greater will be the
power of the fleet for good; just as it would have
been better if Rozhestvensky — assuming his
success — had come before Port Arthur fell,
or better still before its fleet was destroyed. Such
mobility can be acquired only by a familiarity
with the ground, and with the methods to be
followed, such as Nelson by personal experience
had of the Mediterranean and of the West Indies;
of the facilities they oflFered, and the obstacles
they presented. Such knowledge is experimental,
gained only by practice. It is demonstrable, there-
fore, that the proposed voyage is in the highest
degree practical; not only advisable, but im-
perative. Nor should it be a single spasm of
action, but a recurrent procedure; for admirals
and captains go and come, and their individual
experience with them. Why not annual .? The
Pacific is as good a drill ground as the At-
lantic.

326 Naval Administration and Warfare

Retrospect

Since the preceding words were written, the
cruise of the fleet as then contemplated has taken
place; and on this day of present writing the
journey has just been resumed by its second de-
parture from a Pacific home port, San Francisco,
for Honolulu. Sufficient experience has already
been gathered to permit a certain amount of
retrospective estimate of the results of the experi-
ment.

There are two fundamental factors in military
efficiency: the moral and the material. Under
these two heads all details of effectiveness can
be ranged. Neither is without the other; but in
order of precedence the moral — for which not
without advantage we have borrowed a foreign
distinctive name, morale — comes easily first.
The great Napoleon has said : " In war, morale
always prevails." It is in this, particularly, that
the benefit of this experiment was realized up to
the time that the crews, in whom morale or the
reverse soonest shows itself, came again in touch
with home ports and the influences which attach
to them. To put the matter in modern terms,
the cruise from Hampton Roads to Magdalena
Bay, and thence to our Pacific ports, affected the
ships' companies by a change of environment,

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 327

and of occupations. The utility of such change
was testified by Nelson during his weary two
years' blockade of Toulon. " The great thing in
all military service is health " (moral as well as
physical). " It is easier to keep men healthy than
to cure them. Situated as this fleet has been
without a friendly port, I have [secured health]
by changing the cruising ground, not allowing
the sameness of prospect to satiate the mind;
sometimes by looking at Toulon, Villefranche,
Barcelona, and Rosas; then running round Mi-
norca, Majorca, Sardinia, and Corsica; and two
or three times anchoring for a few days." In
consequence of the precautions, of which this
was one, the physician to the fleet, who joined
after eighteen months' blockade work — no
friendly port — wrote that, out of the flagship's
840 men, only one was in bed for illness, and
that the other ten vessels were in equal condi-
tion.

To the crews of our Atlantic fleet, however,
the great beneficial element, the moral alterative,
was not chiefly in the foreign ports; they con-
tributed merely, and somewhat in excess, that
element of recreation, of amusement, which is
recognized in the proverb about " All work and
no play." The moral malady was not confine-
ment to their ships. The gain in morale, to officers

328 Naval Administration and Warfare

and to men, was in the surroundings which in
common Hfe show themselves as " home," and
as " self-dependence." The regularized life of
the sea on a long passage, the enforced, and
therefore contented, confinement to the family
for happiness and comradeship, the steady,
placid fulfilment of the round of small duties, all
having their evident use and meaning, correspond
to the normal conditions which for the large
majority of men fill up the void of mental un-
easiness consequent upon lack of occupation, or
upon restless aimlessness of pursuit. Nothing
so settles as does an observed routine, the details
of which justify themselves to a man's under-
standing. Such a life may become monotonous,
and require, a break; but I hazard little in sub-
mitting to the mass of mankind that, upon the
whole, fixed employment and the presence of
constant associates, family, friends, acquaintance,
give the solid ground upon which usefulness and
happiness are built. This is the steady, healthy
diet of life; promotive of cheerfulness, efficiency,
and reasonable self-esteem.

Considerations such as these have always
made the home stations distasteful, professionally,
to naval officers. I say professionally; because,
doubtless, personally there is something attractive
in being on a coast where a short leave to visit

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 329

one's family may be periodically obtained, or
where the family may come where the ship is
without too heavy expense of travel. But it is,
perhaps, rather by perpetual experience than by
formal consideration that the responsible officers
come to realize that this agreeable feature means
to their subordinates — and to themselves —
a double service, of the ship and of the family,
which invariably lessens usefulness to both by
friction between the two. Let neither be denied,
but rather both be insured by allotting to each
the appointed occasion, the time which belong to
all things under the sun, and upon which the
other may not trespass.

The Pacific cruise eliminated a rivalry, the
inevitable tendency of which is hate toward one
and love toward the other; needless to say which
draws more strongly. When they are in compe-
tition, an element of perfunctoriness drags on
the skirts of duty, which is not neglected; but
its conditions become less beloved. The morale
is lowered. This result is exasperated and exag-
gerated by the navy yard; recourse to which
becomes easy, at the sacrifice of the self-depend-
ence which ought to be the pride of ship as
of man, and which has been and has continued
the laudable boast of the Atlantic fleet through its
late Pacific cruise. Not only is work which a self-

330 Naval Administration and Warfare

respecting ship should do for itself thrown upon
the yard, but the presence of the yard mechanics,
scattered hither and yon, driving, tinkering, and
hammering, reproduce exactly in kind, and to a
distracting degree, what we experience in house-
cleaning, or in the case of somewhat extensive
house repairs. The comfort which home means,
the ordered life which makes the household both
efficient and happy, disappear for the time.
Such things have to be — occasionally; but to
be, say half the year, becomes unendurable and
destructive. " Sameness of prospect," such as
this, soon " satiates " — and vitiates. How much
worse if to discomfort be added the interruption
of the pursuits upon which the maintenance of
the family efficiency depends. While repairs are
going on drills are interrupted; drills of some
kinds can not be held at all; everything is dis-
arranged; routine lies in broken fragments; and
while such confusion impedes the ordinary ac-
tivities of the ship the question naturally arises:
Why can not I, and I, and I, be spared to this or
that outside purpose ? The ship doesn't need
me. This does not tend to serenity, nor promote
happiness; and certainly does not add to effi-
ciency. Restlessness and unsettlement pre-
vail.

This outline of conditions, and the suggested

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 331

analogies, may serve to facilitate appreciation
of that effect of the cruise which took the ships
out of the country for four consecutive months.
These general considerations underlie an un-
derstanding of the specific results. No usual
amount of external ceremonial intercourse with
the authorities of foreign ports, no disturbance
depending upon such " functions," or other
shore association, compares with the internal
disorganization attendant upon navy yard re-
pairs. One reason for the difference is patent.
Repairs done by the ship's own men, under the
ship's own officers, are susceptible of an adjust-
ment which takes into account the other needs
of the vessel. There is unity of direction. In
consequence, at sea during this cruise, there was
magnificent opportunity to perfect the ships*
companies in all ship drills essential for battle.
All hands were on board for long spells of time ;
during which, whatever repairs might be going
on, there were continual drills in handling guns,
supplying ammunition, loading, sighting, fire
control, and all the details pertaining to efficiency
in action; the results of which would also be
visible in the subsequent target practice in Mag-
dalena Bay, and in battle, should such need un-
happily arise. At a navy yard the repairs, when
authorized, are done under the officers of the

332 Naval Administration and Warfare

yard, who, in arranging the manner and rate of
progress, have to consider matters not pertaining
to the particular vessel; such as the requirements
of other ships, the total force of mechanics at
their disposal, the necessity of utilizing the ex-
pensive skilled labor throughout all the working
hours, which are drill hours as well. There is
duahty of management. The yard predominates;
and, in the interests of the country, must pre-
dominate, necessarily.

The ships having been thrown upon them-
selves alone, under unified control, the concen-
tration of minds and hearts upon the vessels and
the fleet, and the long deliverance from distracting
and disturbing alien elements within, have pro-
moted self-dependence and enabled the organic
life of the ships' companies to gain vigor; by
constituting within itself those grouping of kin-
dred interests and associations which reproduce
home and social life, and add distinctly to the
vitality of the whole. That this has been so is
known from high official testimony on board the
fleet; it is, however, also a commonplace of
naval observation at all times and periods. " To
being so long at sea," wrote Nelson, " do we
attribute our being so healthy." Further evidence
to this is borne by the statement in the daily
papers that upon leaving San Francisco, July 7,

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 333

out of the 13,000 men who arrived only 129 ' —
one per cent — were absent from roll-call; of
whom it was believed by the naval officials not
more than one-fourth were intentional desertions.
This is a testimony to improved morale. Also, as
all naval experience past and present testifies,
the movement of many ships together works in
the same direction. Proximity and competition
maintain the natural emulation between vessels,
stimulated often, and in this instance conspicu-
ously, by contests instituted by the Commander-
in-Chief, whose supervision was continued, despite
bodily illness. He thus utilized the universal
human disposition to rivalry, as a powerful lever
for raising the standards of efficiency and per-
formance.

This intensifying of ship life corresponds exactly
to the expansion of individual powers, when
health succeeds illness, when success follows
upon failure, when congenial surroundings of
climate or of fortune take the place of enervating
atmosphere or cramped resources. This is the
greatest result, because it lies at the bottom; it
is as the foundation to a house, still more as the
root to a plant. The consequences of improved

' When the fleet left Hampton Roads, the exact numbers
carried were: officers, 654; seamen, 12,891; marines, 1,237.
I do not understand the latter to be included in the statement
as to desertions.

334 Naval Administration and Warfare

morale so enter into the material advances made
as to be not perfectly distinguishable in effect.
A quantitative analysis is impossible ; yet concrete
visible gains, parallelling the desertion record, can
be stated. Despite previous tactical drills, the
sixteen vessels at the outset were novi^ going
ahead, now stopping, now backing, at irregular
time intervals, in order to regain position lost by
their own fault, or that of their neighbors. Within
a month they were holding their steady way,
250 yards from the stern of one to the bow of
its follower, in four columns abreast each other,
with an evenness of progress that suggested their
being tied together. This was the difference
between the drill-ground and the steady habit
of the march ; between the lecture room and the
practice of a profession. It manifests not merely
the developed capacity of each captain or deck
officer, but the confidence gained by experience of
how the man in the other ship will act; the con-
trast between school and life. It is the touch of
the elbow, which in times past symbolized the
mutual reliance of trained soldiers, as compared
with the lack of that quality which has been
responsible for the disasters of militia.

Consider, too, how much this regularity will
conduce to the movements of the battlefield;
necessarily simple, but with equal necessity to

Cruise oj U. S. Atlantic Fleet 335

be mutual — not common only — and dependable.
In the particular voyage little time could be
spared for formal tactical drills, because the itin-
erary left no sufficient margin for the purpose.
This was a loss, which in repetition could be
obviated by a greater allowance of time from
start to finish, carrying the double advantage of
more time at sea, with its quiet, fixed routine.
The first voyage also was accompanied inevitably
by hospitalities that would naturally not ob-
tain to any like extent on the second and third;
which would thus become more distinctly mili-
tary, without sacrificing the enjoyment of foreign
ports. Nevertheless the manoeuvres incidental
to the march, and the very regularity of the forma-
tion, contribute greatly to develop the tactical
faculty, and in these there was much experience.
In formal manoeuvres, handling is apt to be done
by one or two principal officers; on the march
every deck officer has a chance. Consider further
what cooperation elsewhere is needed, and there-
fore was obtained, to support the skill of the deck
officer. All the motive power must act with a
precision to which constant watchfulness and a
certain degree of foresight are requisite. Upon
all the parties concerned in obtaining these re-
sults presses the public opinion of the ship ; like
the pride of a regiment in its colors, or of a college

336 Naval Administration and Warfare

in its team. An avoidable break, or an avoidable
hot journal, is not the fault of all on board ; but
it is the mortification of all, for it involves the
reputation of " the ship." Besides, the whole
fleet is waiting, looking on, perhaps with swear
words at detention. Any one who has found him-
self a centre of observation under mortifying cir-
cumstances can recall how painfully slow the
moments while struggling for extrication.

Conditions not so immediately visible as these
can be judiciously brought under the same moral
pressure of the shipmates. Fuel consumption, for
instance, may not be, will not be, of itself a matter
of much concern to the private seaman; but in-
stitute, as was instituted, competition in economy,
with published results, and at once emulation is
aroused. Whatever is achieved is to the credit of
the ship; every man has an inch added to his
heels, as really as though he himself had saved the
coal. Such is the moral factor, not to be estimated
in decimal terms of proportion; a source of un-
told energy upon demand. For material result,
the saving of coal during the last 8,2io miles was
such that, had it been obtained also in the first
5,227, the economy would have been 2,390 tons;
or over 2 1-2 per cent, on the total consumption,
had the first rate of expenditure been maintained.
This is an achievement far from contemptible

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 337

in these days of low interest. Doubtless it also
may be improved upon ; but, even as it stands, it
shows the eflFect of moral influences upon stoking.

Economy even which ends in itself is commend-
able, if it be a real economy ; we all know the dear-
ness of a cheap, inferior article. It is a good habit;
and at the least means force, or means, saved for
other purposes. In naval coal saved, while main-
taining the same speed — without which you have
merely acquired an inferior article — it means
either ability to go farther, or to go an equal
distance at a more rapid rate; economy of space
or economy of time -.— convertible terms. The
strategic value of both is readily understood.
When to this cheering achievement is added that
the vessels showing it reached port after a voyage
of over 13,000 miles in as good condition as re-
gards efficiency of engines as when they started,
or better, the double event is more than encour-
aging. It is a revelation. Few believed that it
could be done. Prophecies of vessels disabled
abounded; and to the no small surprise of the
instructed — which all of us can be — are again
renewed in prospect of a similar voyage.

Thus we learn from one of the journals which
most persistently harped on the imagined hostile
purpose of the original despatch of the fleet,
that " the months required for the next journey

338 Naval Administration and Warfare

will take the best of the life and efficiency out
of our fine ships of war. When they get back
to Hampton Roads every one of them will have
to be repaired at great cost and at once. The
boilers and other machinery in nearly every ship
will have to be torn to pieces. This means that
for months after the fleet has returned to the
Atlantic the country will continue to be deprived
of the possible services of these ships in an
international emergency. The cost will be tre-
mendous, but the grave feature is the helplessness
of the country meanwhile, and the opportunity
of a foreign nation to strike." Why this should
be said, unless in hope to injure the Adminis-
tration, is hard to understand. One is reminded
somewhat pathetically of the words of Admiral
Villeneuve to his captains, within a year before
he lost Trafalgar. " We have no reason to fear
the sight of the English squadron. Their seventy-
fours have not five hundred men on board; they
are worn out by long cruising." In this he echoed
his master, Napoleon, and it was so far true that
Nelson himself was then writing of his " crazy
ships;" "not a storeship a week would keep
them in repair." A month later Villeneuve
wrote again : " The squadron appeared very
fine in port, crews drilling well; but as soon as
a storm came all was changed. They were not

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 339

drilled in storms." " These gentlemen," com-
mented Nelson, " are not used to the hurricanes,
which we have braved twenty-one months without
losing mast or yard."

There lies before me a letter to the New York
" Herald " from Lieutenant-Commander Lloyd
H. Chandler,' principal aid to Admiral Evans,
and who commanded a squadron of torpedo-
boat destroyers sent from our Atlantic Coast to
Manila some years ago. He writes from Mag-
dalena Bay: " As for readiness for further travel,
it may be stated that there is not a ship in the
fleet whose machinery is not in much better
condition than when she left Hampton Roads.
Many little matters which lacked adjustment,
as machinery does after dockyard overhauUng,
have been corrected, and now every ship is run-
ning as smoothly as can be desired, and is ready
for any duty which may he assigned her." This,
again, is sea efficiency against the port, or merely
drill, habit. The improvement in the steaming
and efficiency of the torpedo flotilla seems to have
been even more decisive than in those of the battle-
ships. " They improved steadily in the condition of

' New York " Herald," March 29, 1908. I have quoted
much from the letter of Lieutenant-Commander Chandler,
using at times his own words. I would recommend any person
interested in the subject, and having access to a file of the
" Herald," to read the whole letter.

340 Naval Administration and Warfare

their machinery during the period of their hardest
service." The fleet on arrival in Magdalena Bay
was ready to proceed at once to target practice,
so far as motive power was concerned; to use
the characteristically graphic expression of the
Commander-in-Chief, they were prepared equally
" for a fight or a frolic." The targets were placed
at once, but the doing this with the precision of
modern methods requires time.

If this were the case after 13,437 miles, without
prolonged stops for repair, why not rather hope
that the two months' rest at our Pacific ports may
have sent the fleet out with no greater draw-
backs than the need again to adjust the dockyard
work .f' Of course, machinery does suffer wear
and tear; but it also may suffer rust. What is
worse, the engine-room force may grow rusty.
There is no reason to apprehend for the fleet more
than the dangers of the sea, which ships are meant
to meet. Short of total disablement, which there
is no cause to expect, the gain in the morale of
men not suffered to rust will outweigh, as in the
case of Nelson and Villeneuve, the loss by wear
and tear to ships or engines. Unless the ships
can not steam at all, they will manoeuvre and
fight better.

A very interesting feature of this extremely
satisfactory result in the machinery is that the run,

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 341

one of the longest, if not the very longest, made
by a fleet of battleships, has been accomplished
under the new system, instituted by law in 1899,
by which the two corps of the line and engineer
officers were merged into one. The substantial
effect of this change was to restore the conditions
obtaining in the days of sail, when the seamen
who fought the ship were also in charge of the
motive power. Grave fears were felt and ex-
pressed in many quarters that the same class of
officers could not perform both duties efficiently;
that the engines especially would suffer from
being in charge of men who had not been trained
exclusively to take care of machinery. What
the results to machinery were from this long
voyage has just been stated. Of the sixteen
battleships participating, Lieutenant-Commander
Chandler tells us that the steam departments of
four only were in charge of the old engineer corps.
The remaining twelve had had no connection with
it, nor had received any engineering education
other than that which by the new system is given
to every officer of " the line " — the name now
common to the officers of the bridge, the gun,
and the engine. In the torpedo flotilla there was
but one officer of the former " engineer corps,"
Lieut. -Commander Hutch L Cone, and he had
military command of the whole body; the men

342 Naval Administration and Warfare

in charge of the several engines were products of
the new system. The conclusions reached from
this very practical test may be accounted among
the gains of the cruise.

The questions of supply — of fuel, of provisions,
and of other stores — have been met in part by
the occasional prearranged meetings with colliers;
in part by accompanying colliers, by the presence
of two general supply vessels, and of one equipped
for making repairs more extensive than the or-
dinary resources of a ship permit; a kind of
floating navy-yard, with the advantage of being
under the same control as the fleet itself. These
methods of administration were planned before
the sailing of the fleet; its progress has contributed
forcibly to further elucidation, both by the
successes and the shortcomings of the arrange-
ments made. " The work has been done in the
most satisfactory manner; nevertheless, we see
several ways in which we could improve." Much
useful experience was gained in the details of
organization for transferring from the storeships
to the sixteen vessels of the fleet. It was found
also that the repair ship would be bettered by
having some classes of mechanics, not allowed,
nor necessary, to a ship in ordinary commission.
This is but another case of our common ex-
perience that doing things reveals difficulties and

Cruise 0} U. S. Atlantic Fleet 343

perfects methods. A fleet on voyage is an army
on the march, an army in campaign; where the
problems are essentially different from those of
an army in garrison, or on the battlefield, but
equally vital to efficiency. In no other way than
voyaging can these problems of subsistence be
solved by practical tests. It is correctly remarked
by Lieutenant-Commander Chandler that " ex-
perience in moving a fleet from one scene of
operation to another is the first gain." It is
first in importance as well as in order. Not only
questions of supply, but the strategic questions
of steaming radius at several speeds, upon which
depends the rapidity with which a fleet can be
transferred; what the rate of coal expenditure
which will give the longest distance and attendant
speed without recoaling. The present writer
would have liked to see also tested the question
of transferring coal and stores under the possible
conditions of war ; of neutral ports refusing their
shelter for such operations. While this was not
tried, we are told that satisfactory results were
attained in rapidity of coaling in port.

In conclusion, it may safely be believed that in
the increased home life so promoted, in the pride
felt for the ship, and in the fleet, have been realized
elements of moral force which will assert them-
selves in a greater attachment to the navy as a

344 Naval Administration and War jar e

profession — what the French call esprit de corps
— in a consequent greater willingness to enlist
and to remain in the service, and in a more
effective attainment of results in matters of tactics
and target practice; due to exactly that moral
stimulus which confidence in one's self and one's
companions, the pride of achievement and glow
of competition, induce everywhere and in all
men. In Magdalena Bay the crews came to
target practice, and such other practical work
as the conditions admitted, with ship pride in-
tensified, with greater " fitness to win." Their
progress round the world, being a condition of
almost incessant movement, has promoted well-
being of body and mind by the influence which
variety of interest and change of scene has always
been seen to exert; but, in all this broadening
of the mind and engaging of the attention, the
one constant factor has been the Fleet. Its own
excellence, its daily improvement, the welcome
accorded it in all parts, have been the immediate
cause of a healthy pride which actually is that
of patriotism ; seeing the nation behind its repre-
sentative force.

Finally, no notice of efl^ects in the fleet would
be adequate which failed to recognize explicitly the
indebtedness of the nation to the Commander-
in-Chief, Admiral Evans. Despite the bodily

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 345

sickness of which the newspapers kept us in-
formed, and which prevented his personal share
in honors and welcomes extended to his command,
to him has been due the perfect work of organi-
zation, by which the great body under his com-
mand has been enabled to move, day by day,
and from port to port, fulfiUing all its duties
without a hitch. The happy result entitles him
to the first place in the credit won by the fleet

— not only in his own country, but everywhere
by men capable of appreciating naval results.

Reverting to the threatening international as-
pect which certain of our newspapers sought to
attribute to this movement, it may be permitted to
observe that their action was peculiarly incon-
siderate and ill-timed, not to say unpatriotic;
because, whether designedly or not, it conduced
to perilous international exasperation at the
moment when a very delicate international question
could be seen to be pending. It is vain to ignore
that the entire English speaking Pacific seaboard

— British Columbia, our own States of Wash-
ington, Oregon, and California, the Common-
wealths of Australasia — is set as one man against
Asiatic immigration. Directed a gainst the as yet
formless mass of Chinese population, this teel-
ing might not threaten immediate danger; but

346 Naval Administration and Warfare

in the Japanese it confronts a highly organized
government, a people substantially homogeneous,
of chivalrous military spirit, conscious of recent
great achievement, and naturally resentful of an
exclusion, which, because confined to Asiatics, may
easily be imagined invidious in temper, as it is
in act, and may readily take on an appearance
of asserted superiority of race. Such conditions
are like sensitive explosives; to approach which
by stirring up national feeling, imputing to one
government hostile purpose in exercising its
unquestionable and inoffensive right to move its
navy where it will, either in its own waters or
on the international common, the sea, is to imi-
tate the man who enters a magazine with a lighted
torch. Doubtless, statesmen on either side will
understand law and comity, will appreciate con-
ditions accurately, and will keep their heads;
but peoples under manipulated excitement some-
times escape control and force the hands of their
rulers.

The American newspapers which thus acted,
whether of malice prepense towards the govern-
ment in power, or through mere wanton pro-
fessional stirring up a subject for public interest,
or perhaps through sheer ignorance in matters
on which they professed to teach, may enjoy
the knowledge that the agitation originating

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 347

with them served to point the pen of European
periodicists, daily and other, to the discredit of
their country. Doubtless, these reflected impu-
tations upon the American people and their
magistrates were accepted by readers; why not,
since Americans themselves gave them vogue ?
I subjoin some extracts from a magazine sent me
by an English friend. If somewhat entertaining,
from the ingenuity of the misrepresentations, they
may serve to reveal to Americans generally what
we owe to the perverse coloring given to national
action by American journalists.

" About the period when these lines appear in print the
civilized world in both hemispheres will, according to the
American Press, be following with palpitating interest the prog-
ress made by the gigantic fleet which, in obedience to the
orders of President Roosevelt, is now slowly working its way
from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the far distant waters
of Japan. . . . When we ask, ' What is the object of this enor-
mous outlay, and how is it calculated to impress any naval
nation with terror .'' ' we ask in vain. . . .

" If ever America should attempt to carry on a war with any
powerful nation abroad, she would be hopelessly handicapped.
This inferiority would be due to the hard fact that the United
States has hitherto proved incapable of keeping up a formi-
dable navy in time of peace. ... In consequence of the non-
descript character of the rank and file in American regiments
and American men of war, discipline can only be maintained
by excessive and often brutal severity. . . . Under these cir-

348 Naval Administration and Warfare

cumstances," (of unwillingness of men to enter the services),
" the United States is not in a position to send a fleet abroad to
conduct a serious campaign against Japan or any foreign first
class power, such as Japan has shown herself to be.

" The policy of bluff is a recognized device of American
statesmanship. . . . The first idea, therefore, which would
suggest itself to American statesmanship would be to bluff, by
sending to Japanese waters an enormous fleet, not intended
to fight, but designed to overawe the Japanese by the mere
fact of its presence. If a policy of bluff should prove successful
in cowing the Japanese, the President's fellow countrymen
will exult in his triumph."

" When the Roosevelt armada reaches the shores of Japan
there will be only two courses for the American Government
to pursue. Either it must present some form of ultimatum
to the Mikado, to be accompanied by a covert threat of hostile
action in the event of its refusal, or the fleet must return to
America, after having made a futile demonstration.''

Like its American models, this English peri-
odical overlooks the obvious in order to present
a fancy picture. In view of these illuminating
comments, let it be hoped that hereafter a more
rational tone may be adopted by our press; or,
if not, that the public will accurately value journal-
istic hysteria. It is not by the unpatriotic course
of abandoning national rights as to our navy
that the notorious causes of international differ-
ence then existing can be amended; but rather

Cruise oj U. S. Atlantic Fleet 349

by directing attention to the obvious fact that
the distinction between ourselves and the great
peoples of Japan and China is not primarily
one of race, or color, much less one of asserted
superiority on our part, but of divergent develop-
ment through thousands of years. What we call
our civilization, — that is, the spiritual, intellectual
and political development of the countries of
Europe, America, and in some degree of Western
Asia, — derives from Palestine, Greece and
Rome. The immigrants whom we are apt to
think most undesirable, the Slavic Jew and the
Southern Italian, inherit from these sources in their
measure, as really as our wisest and our best.
There is a radical oneness of origin and develop-
ment which favors assimilation. During ages,
that waste tract of Central Asia known as the
Roof of the World shut oiF China, Japan, and
the adjoining countries from communication
with Europe. Until the last century this seclu-
sion was welcomed and enforced by themselves;
thereby also evincing a spirit radically and es-
sentially different from that which spread the
Teutons over the Roman Empire, and has brought
America, Africa, and India under European
civilization and rule. The Farther East grew up,
and evolved its own splendid civilizations in
isolation, as far as Europe is concerned.

350 Naval Administration and Warfare

Unless prepared to deny the influence of pro-
longed continuous environment, of concentrated
heredity, — of in-breeding, so to say, — it can
not but be admitted that such different streams
of derivation must issue in dissemblance, spir-
itual, intellectual and political, unfavorable to
present assimilation. Nor can this result of
three thousand years be seriously modified in a
single century, even by the marvellous aptitude
with vphich Japan has adopted Western methods;
a matter very different from Western sentiment,
tradition and ideals, the true moulders of popular
character. After four centuries of intercourse, two
of which in very close contact, India still remains
Indian in thought and manners; inspirit substan-
tially unchanged by the West. Such profound
essential divergences prevent the community of
outlook essential to a common citizenship, or
to a common domicile ; contact, if extensive and
close, particularly when between the less reflective
classes, will not promote harmony, but intensify
discord. This truth unhappily is too evident for
insistence. It is no new thing, but is seen where-
ever the Asiatic and the European are thrown
together; not in the accidental amenities of per-
sonal intercourse, but on any scale large enough to
be called social. They do not blend socially. The
difference in color doubtless serves in some degree

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 351

to obtrude and emphasize the difference of ante-
cedents ; but it is actually slight when contrasted
with the East Indians, whose achievements in
thought and in art, like those of the Saracens,
have evidenced their equality with Europeans
in mental and spiritual endowments. In view
of such facts, assumptions of superiority, based
on color only, are preposterous. On the other
hand, where the difference of color is most marked,
in the African negro, the presence of whom and
his descendants in the United States constitutes
so great a problem, the difficulty of political in-
corporation, though great, is less. Color is there
the chief factor, because at the moment of contact
between the two races it accompanied and em-
phasized a racial inferiority of development,
intellectual, social and political. This condition
was prolonged up to a half-century ago, by slavery;
and the time which has since elapsed has not
sufficed to annul it. To whatever causes that
original inferiority be attributed, the negro could
not, and cannot, oppose to the influence of the
white any such barrier of subtle and elaborate
philosophies of life as prevail in the East. These,
incarnated in long standing highly organized
communities, constitute the backbone of resistance
to the intrusion of European ideals on the part
of the ancient religious and social systems of

352 Naval Administration and Warfare

China, India and Japan; and, by their effect
on the individual members of those commun-
ities, through generations of inheritance, ren-
der them as a rule inapt to political assimilation
with us. It is a matter for reasonable appre-
hension that unrestricted immigration, accom-
panied with naturalization, would result in Asiatic
immigrants voting substantially together, in mass;
and the United States already has too much
experience of such solidarities, dependent upon
other considerations than those of public good, or
of private interests, which tend to counterbalance.
On the other hand, immigration with citizenship
denied would not only be a state of things foreign
to the spirit of our institutions, but would pro-
voke greater discontent than exclusion; a dis-
content, too, to which it would be less easy to
make a rational reply.

If these things be so, let thinking men, whether
they belong to the one race or to the other, habit-
uate their minds to the reconciling fact that pref-
erence for the predominance, within their na-
tional borders, of the civilization to which they
are accustomed, need not, and should not, imply
any offensive claim of superiority. This, realized
by the thoughtful, may spread throughout the
mass. It is an essential preliminary to under-
standing; and, possibly, in the remote end to

Cruise of U. S. Atlantic Fleet 353

a community of standards, to a common out-
look.

Since writing the above, the cable reports the
fleet's arrival at Manila, after a voyage from
San Francisco closely approaching in length that
from Hampton Roads to Magdalena. Admiral
Sperry, successor to Admiral Evans, is quoted
as saying that since the warships had been thrown
on their own resources, without the convenience
and support of a navy yard, their efficiency had
been greatly increased. This, he added, was par-
ticularly true of the engineering department.
Upon this depends mobility, the particular char-
acteristic of navies, regarded as a fighting force;
and the maintenance of such efiiciency is perhaps
the severest requirement of this prolonged ex-
perience.

The remarks attributed here to Admiral Sperry
accord with those of Lieut.-Commander Chandler,
— before quoted. The ships arrived at Manila
a day late, owing to failure of colliers to join on
time at Albany. This postponed departure by
sixty hours; that much of this was made up adds
to the evidence of efficiency. The incident touches
the question of supply, vital to such operations.
In war, it might have been disastrous ; occurring
in peace, it prompts remedial precautions.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE: A CON-
SISTENT DEVELOPMENT

THE MONROE DOCTRINE

THE formulation of the Monroe Doctrine,
as distinguished from its origin, resulted, as
is universally understood, from the political con-
ditions caused by the revolt of the Spanish colonies
in America. Up to that time, and for centuries
previous, the name Spain had signified to Europe
in general not merely the mother country, but a
huge colonial system, with its special economical
and commercial regulation; the latter being de-
termined through its colonial relations, upon the
narrowest construction of colonial policy then
known, which was saying a great deal. Spain
stood for the Spanish Empire, divisible primarily
into two chief components, Spain and Greater
Spain; the mother country and the colonies.
The passage of time had been gradually reversing
the relative importance of the two in the appre-
hension of other European states. In Sir Robert
Walpole's day it was believed by many besides
himself that Great Britain could not make head
against France and Spain combined. The naval
power of Spain, and consequently her political

857

358 Naval Administration and Warfare

weight, still received awed consideration; a relic
of former fears. This continued, though in a di-
minished degree, through the War of American
Independence; but by the end of the century,
while it may be too much to affirm that such
apprehension had wholly disappeared, — that no
account was taken of the unwieldy numbers of
ill-manned and often ill-officered ships that made
up the Spanish navy, — it is true that a Spanish
war bore to British seamen an aspect rather
financial than military. It meant much more of
prize money than of danger; and that it did
so was due principally to the wealth of the
colonies.

This wealth was potential as well as actual, and
in both aspects it appealed to Europe. To
break in upon the monopoly enjoyed by Spain,
and consecrated in international usage both
by accepted ideas and long prescription, was an
object of policy to the principal European mar-
itime states. It was so conspicuously to Great
Britain, on account of the pre-eminence which
commercial considerations always had in her
councils. In the days of William III., the pros-
pective failure of the Spanish royal house brought
up the question of what other family should
succeed, and to whom should be transferred the
great inheritance won by Columbus, Cortez and

The Monroe Doctrine 359

Pizarro. Thenceforth the thought of dividing
this spoil of a decadent empire — the sick man of
that day — remained in men's memory as a
possible contingency of the future, even though
momentarily out of the range of practical politics.
The waning of Spain's political and military
prestige was accompanied by an increasing under-
standing of the value of the commercial system
appended to her in her colonies. The future
disposition of these extensive regions, and the
fruition of their wealth, developed and unde-
veloped, were conceived as questions of universal
European policy. In the general apprehension
of European rulers, these were regarded as affect-
ing the European balance of power.

It was as the opponent of this conception, the
perfectly natural outcome of previous circum-
stances and history, that the Monroe Doctrine
entered the field; a newcomer in form, yet having
its own history and antecedent conditions as
really as the conflicting European view. Far
more than South America, which had seen little
contested occupation, the Northern continent had
known what it was to be the scene of antagonistic
European ambitions and exploitation. There
had been within her territory a balance of Eu-
ropean power, in idea, if not in achievement, quite
as real as any that had existed or been fought

360 Naval Administration and Warfare

for in Europe. Canada in the hands of France,
and the mouth of the Mississippi in ahen control,
were matters of personal memory to many, and
of very recent tradition to all Americans in active
Hfe in 1810. Florida then was still Spanish, with
unsettled boundary questions and attendant evils.
Not reason only, but feeling, based upon experi-
ence of actual inconvenience, suffering, and loss,
— loss of life and loss of wealth, political anxiety
and commercial disturbance, — conspired to in-
tensify opposition to any avoidable renewal of
similar conditions. To quote the words of a
distinguished American Secretary of State —
for Foreign Affairs — speaking twenty years
ago, " This sentiment is properly called a Doctrine,
for it has no prescribed sanction, and its assertion
is left to the exigency which may invoke it."
This accurate statement places it upon the surest
political foundation, much firmer than precise
legal enactment or international convention, that
of popular conviction. The sentiment had existed
beforehand; the first exigency which invoked
its formulated expression, in 1823, was the an-
nounced intention of several great Powers to
perpetuate by force the European system, whether
of colonial tenure, or balance of power, or monar-
chical forms, in the Spanish colonies; they being
then actually in revolt against the mother country,

The Monroe Doctrine 361

and seeking, not other political relations to
Europe, but simply their own independence.

This political question of independence, how-
ever, involved also necessarily that of commer-
cial relations; and both were interesting to out-
side states. So far as then appeared, renewed
dependence meant the perpetuation of com-
mercial exclusion against foreign nations. This
characterized all colonial regulation at that
time, and continued in Spanish practice, in Cuba
and other dependencies, until the final downfall
of Spain's diminished empire in 1898. It must
be recognized, therefore, that all outside parties
to the controversy, all parties other than Spain
and her colonies, which had special incitements
of their own, were influenced by two classes of
motives, — political and commercial. These are
logically separable, although in practice inter-
twined. The incentive of the continental Powers
— Austria, Prussia, and Russia, with the sub-
sequent accession of France — was primarily
political. Their object was to perpetuate in
South America political conditions connected
with the European system, by breaking down
popular revolt against absolutist government,
and maintaining the condition of dependence
upon Spain. Whither this might lead in case of
armed intervention, which was contemplated,

362 Naval Administration and Warfare

was a question probably of the division of spoil;
for in the end Spain could hardly pay the bill
otherwise than by colonial cessions. But whether
the movement of the Holy Alliance, as it was
self-styled, issued merely in the suppression of
popular liberties, or introduced further a European
balance of power with its rivalries and conflicts, its
wars and rumors of wars, both results were polit-
ically abhorrent to American feelings and disturb-
ing to American peace. They gave rise to distinctly
political objections by the people and statesmen
of the United States. In consequence of these
sentiments, the exigency of the moment called
out the first reasoned official expression of the
national conviction and purpose, now known as
the Monroe Doctrine. Subsidiary to this political
motive, but clearly recognized and avowed, was
the legitimate inducement of commercial interest,
benefited by the rejection of European rule, and
to be injured by its restoration.

It will not be expected that a British Tory
administration, before the Reform Bill of 1832
and with the protective system and Navigation
Act in full force, should have shared the particular
political prepossessions of the American States.
These were closely concerned geographically,
had been lately themselves colonies, and were
but very recently emerged from a prolonged con-

The Monroe Doctrine 363

flict with British commercial regulations, based
upon the ancient conception of colonial adminis-
tration. Still, Great Britain also, in addition to
commercial ambitions and interests greater then
than those of the United States, the outcome of
a century of effort against Spanish monopoly,
did have a distinct political leaning in the matter.
There ran through both political parties a real
and deep sympathy with communities struggling
for freedom. The iniquity of suppressing such
efforts by the external force of third parties, not
immediately concerned, was strongly felt. There
was accepted also among British statesmen a
clearly defined rule of conduct, which had been
conspicuously illustrated in the early days of the
French Revolution, still a matter of recent memory
in 1820, that interference in the intestine struggles
of a foreign country, such as those then afflicting
both the Spanish kingdom and colonies, was
neither right in principle nor expedient in policy.
Basing its action firmly on these convictions,
the British Ministry, under the influence of Can-
ning, intimated clearly that, while neutral towards
the intervention of the Holy Alliance in Spain
itself, to restore there the old order of things, it
would not permit the transport of armies to
South America for a like purpose. The course of
the Alliance in Spain was viewed with disapproval ;

364 Naval Administration and Warfare

but it did not immediately concern Great Britain
to an extent demanding armed resistance. The
case of the colonies was different. Intervention
there would be prejudicial to British mercantile
enterprise, already heavily engaged in their trade
and economical development; while politically,
the occupation of the Peninsula by French armies
would be offset by the detachment of the colonies
from their previous dependence. To the effect
of this British attitude the position of the United
States government, defined by President Monroe
in his Message of December, 1823, constituted
a powerful support, and the news of it caused
general satisfaction in England. However mo-
tived, the two English-speaking countries, without
formal concert, still less in alliance, occupied the
same ground and announced the same purpose.
Spain might conquer her colonies unaided, if
she could; neither would interfere; but the at-
tempt of other Powers to give her armed assist-
ance would be regarded by each as unfriendly
to itself.

From this momentary identity of position
exaggerated inferences have been drawn as to the
identity of impulses and community of sentiment
which had brought either state to it. So far was
this from being true, that on December 31, 1823,
only four weeks after Monroe's celebrated Mes-

The Monroe Doctrine 365

sage, probably then received in England, Canning
wrote to the British minister to Spain : "Monarchy
in Mexico and monarchy in Brazil would cure the
evils of universal democracy and prevent the
drawing of the line of demarcation which I most
dread — America versus Europe. The United
States naturally enough aim at this division." '
The opposition of ideas is plain. It was a case of
two paths converging; not thenceforth to unite,
but to cross, and continue each in its former
general direction, diverging rather than approxi-
mating. Though crumbling before the rising
stream of progress, the ideas appropriate to the
eighteenth century had not yet wholly disappeared
from British conceptions; still less had the prac-
tice and policy of the state conformed them-
selves to the changed point of view, which in
the middle of the nineteenth century began to
characterize British statesmanship with reference
to colonies. The battles of reformed pohtical
representation and of free trade were yet to fight
and win; old opinions continued as to the com-
mercial relationship of colonies to the mother
country, although modification in details was
being introduced. The West Indies were still
the most important group in the British colonial

' Stapleton's " Canning and his Times." Quoted in Moore's
International Law Digest, Vol. VI. p. 410.

366 Naval Administration and Warfare

system, and one of the latest acts of Canning,
who died in 1827, ^^^ to renew there commercial
discrimination against the United States; a meas-
ure which, however prompted, could scarcely
be said to reflect the image of the Monroe Doc-
trine.

For a generation then to come, British states-
men remained under the domination of habits of
thought which had governed the course of the
two Pitts; and they failed, as men usually fail,
to discern betimes changes of condition which
modify, if not the essentials, at least the appli-
cation even of a policy sound in general principle.
In 1823, not ten years had elapsed since the
British government had contemplated exacting
from the United States, as the result of our pros-
tration at the close of the War of 18 12, territorial
cessions and concessions which might make an
American of to-day, ignorant of the extremes to
which his country was then reduced, gasp with
amazement. How then could it be that Great
Britain, which for centuries had been acquiring
territory, and to whom the Americas were still
the most immediate commercial interest, should
heartily accept the full scope of the Monroe
Doctrine, as applicable to the extension of her
own dominion, by conquest or otherwise, to any
part of the American continents where she did

The Monroe Doctrine 367

not at that moment have clear title ? As a matter
of fact she did not in any wise accept this. The
American declaration against " the extension of
the system of the Allied Powers to any portion of
this hemisphere " was welcomed as supporting
the attitude of Great Britain; for the phrase,
in itself ambiguous, was understood to apply, not
to the Quintuple Alliance for the preservation of
existing territorial arrangements in Europe, to
which Great Britain was a party, but to the Holy
Alliance, the avowed purpose of which was to
suppress by external force revolutionary move-
ments within any state — a course into which she
had refused to be drawn. But the complementary
declaration in the President's Message, that
" the American continents are henceforth not to
be considered as subjects for future colonization
by any European Power," was characterized
in the Annual Register for 1823 ^^ " scarcely less
extravagant than that of the Russian ukase by
which it was elicited," which forbade any foreign
vessel from approaching within a hundred miles
of the Russian possession now known as Alaska.
The British government took the same view;
and in the protocol to a Conference held in 1827
expressly repudiated this American claim.

There was therefore between the two countries
at this moment a clear opposition of principle,

368 Naval Administration and Warfare

and agreement only as to a particular line of
conduct in a special case. With regard to the in-
terventions of the Holy Alliance in Europe, Great
Britain, while reserving her independence of
action, stood neutral for the time; but through
motives of her own policy showed unmistakably
that she would resist like action in Spanish Amer-
ica. The United States, impelled by an entirely
different conception of national policy, now first
officially enunciated, intimated in diplomatic
phrase a similar disposition. The two supported
one another in the particular contingency, and
doubtless frustrated whatever intention any mem-
bers of the Holy Alliance may have entertained
of projecting to the other side of the Atlantic their
" union for the government of the world." In
America, as in Europe, Great Britain deprecated
the intrusion of external force to settle internal
convulsions of foreign countries; but she did
not commit herself, as the United States did, to
the position that purchase or war should never
entail a cession of territory by an American to a
European state; a transaction which would be
in so far colonization. In resisting any transfer
of Spanish American territory to a European
Power, Great Britain was not advancing a general
principle, but maintaining an immediate interest.
Her motive, in short, had nothing in common

The Monroe Doctrine 369

with the Monroe Doctrine. Such principles as
were involved had been formulated long before,
and had controlled her action in Europe as in
America.

The United States dogma, on the contrary,
planted itself squarely on the separate system
and interests of America. This is distinctly shown
by the comments of the Secretary of State, John
Quincy Adams, in a despatch to the American
minister in London, dated only two days before
Monroe's Message. Alluding to Canning's most
decisive phrase in a recent despatch, he wrote:

Great Britain could not see any part of the colonies trans-
ferred to any other Power with indifference. We certainly do
concur with her in this position ; but the principles of that
aversion, so far as they are common to both parties, resting
only upon a casual coincidence of interests, in a national point
of view selfish ' on both sides, would be liable to dissolution
by every change of phase in the aspects of European politics.
So that Great Britain, negotiating at once with the European
Alliance and with us concerning America, without being bound
by any permanent community of principle, would still be free
to accommodate her policy to any of those distributions of
power, and partitions of territory, which for the last half-century
have been the ultima ratio of all European political arrange-
ments.

For this reason Adams considered that recog-
nition of the independence of the revolted colonies,

' Adams' italics.

370 Naval Administration and Warfare

already made by the United States, in March,
1822, must be given by Great Britain also, in
order to place the two States on equal terms of
co-operation. From motives of European policy,
from which Great Britain could not dissociate
herself, she delayed this recognition until 1825;
and then Mr. Canning defined his general course
towards the Spanish colonies in the famous words,
" I called the New World into existence to re-
dress the balance of the Old. I resolved that,
if France had Spain, it should not be Spain with
the Indies." His coincidence with the policy of
the United States is thus seen to be based, and
properly, upon British interests as involved in the
European system; but that, so far from being
the Monroe Doctrine, is almost the opposite of
it.

Nor was it only in direction that the impulses
of the two States differed. They were unequal in
inherent vital strength. The motive force of the
one was bound to accumulate, and that of the
other to relax, by the operation of purely natural
conditions. An old order was beginning to yield
to a new. After three centuries of tutelage Amer-
ica was slipping out of European control. She
was reaching her majority and claiming her own.
Within her sphere she felt the future to be hers.
Of this sense the Monroe Doctrine was an utter-

The Monroe Doctrine 371

ance. It was a declaration of independence; not
for a single nation only, but for a continent of
nations, and it carried implicitly the assertion
of all that logically follows from such independence.
Foremost among the conditions ensuring its
vitality was propinquity, with its close effect upon
interest. Policy, as well as war, is a business
of positions. This maxim is perennial; a gen-
eration later it was emphasized in application
by the peopling of the Pacific coast, the incidental
discovery of gold in California, and the conse-
quent enhanced importance of the Isthmus of
Panama to the poHtical strategy of nations.
All this advanced the Monroe Doctrine on the
path of development, giving broader sweep to
the corollaries involved in the original proposi-
tion; but the transcendent positional interest
of the United States no more needed demonstra-
tion in 1823 than in 1850, when the Clayton-
Bulwer treaty was made, or than now, when not
the Pacific coast only, but the Pacific Ocean and
the farther East, lend increased consequence to
the Isthmian communications.

The case of the United States is now stronger,
but it is not clearer. Correlatively, the admission
of its force by others has been progressive; gradual
and practical, not at once or formal. Its formu-
lation in the Monroe Doctrine has not obtained

372 Naval Administration and Warfare

the full legislative sanction even of the country
of its origin; and its present development there
rests upon successive utterances of persons offi-
cially competent to define, but not of full authority
to commit the nation to their particular expres-
sions. So, too, international acquiescence in the
position now taken has been a work of time, nor
can there be asserted for it the final ratification
of international agreement. The Monroe Doc-
trine remains a policy, not a law, either munic-
ipal or international; but it has advanced in
scope and in acceptance. The one progress as
the other has been the result of growing strength ;
strength of numbers and of resources. Taken
with position, these factors constitute national
powers as they do military advantage, which in
the last analysis may always be resolved into two
elements, force and position.

In the conjunction of these two factors is to be
found the birth of the Monroe Doctrine and
its development up to the present time. It is a
product of national interest, involved in position,
and of national power dependent upon population
and resources. These are the permanent factors
of the Monroe Doctrine; and it can not be too
strongly realized by Americans that the perma-
nence of the Doctrine itself, as a matter of inter-
national consideration, depends upon the main-

The Monroe Doctrine 373

tenance of both factors. To this serious truth
record is borne by History, the potent mother
of national warning and national encouragement.
That the Doctrine at its first enunciation should
not at once have obtained either assent or in-
fluence, even in its most limited expression, vsras
entirely natural. Although not without an an-
tecedent history of conception and occasional
utterance by American statesmen, its moment of
birth was the announcement by Alonroe; and
it had then all the weakness of the new born,
consequent upon a national inadequacy to the
display of organized strength which had been
pathetically manifested but ten years before.
After the destruction of the rule of Spain in her
colonies, except in Cuba and Porto Rico, Great
Britain remained the one great nation besides the
United States possessed of extensive territory in
America. She also was the one state that had
had experience of us as an enemy, and known the
weakness of our military system for offensive
action. What more natural than that she should
have welcomed the first promulgation of the
Doctrine, in its original scope directed apparehtly
merely against a combination of Continental
Powers, the purposes of which were offensive
to herself, and yet fail to heed a root principle
which in progress of time should find its appli-

374 Naval Administration and Warfare

cation to herself, contesting the expansion of her
own influence in the hemisphere, as being part
of the European system and therefore faUing
under the same condemnation ? Yet even had she
see this, and fully appreciated the promise of
strength to come, it was to be expected that she
should for the mean time pursue her own policy,
irrespective of the still distant future. It may be
advantageous to retard that which ultimately
must prevail; and at all events men who head
the movements of nations are not able at once to
abandon the traditions of the past, and conform
their action to new ideas as yet unassimilated
by their people.

There is then this distinguishing feature of
the Monroe Doctrine, which classifies it among
principles of policy that are essentially permanent.
From its correspondence to the nature of things,
to its environment, it possessed from the first a
vitality which ensured growth and development.
Under such conditions it could not remain in
application at the end of a half-century just what
it had been in terms at the beginning. Appre-
hended in leading features by American states-
men, and by them embraced with a conviction
which the people shared, — though probably not
fully understanding, — it received from time to
time, as successive exigencies arose to provoke

The Monroe Doctrine 375

assertion, definitions which enlarged its scope;
sometimes consistently with its true spirit, some-
times apparently in excess of evident limitations,
more rarely in defect of them. But from the
fact of Great Britain's existing territorial pos-
sessions in America, and from her commercial
pre-eminence and ambitions, to which territorial
acquisition is often desirable, it was also in the
nature of things that with her successive conten-
tions should arise. If not a balance of power, such
as had distracted Europe, at least opposing scales
had existed from the first; connected, not per-
haps with the European system as a whole, but
certainly with a most important component of
that system. Moreover, the strength of Great
Britain in America, relatively to the United
States, was not American strength, but European
strength. It was therefore unavoidably invidious
to the sentiment breathed in the Monroe Doc-
trine, and much more so when the United States
was weak than when she became strong.

From these circumstances, it has been through
discussion with Great Britain chiefly that the
Doctrine, marking the advance of the sentiment,
has progressed from definition to definition, no
one of which is final in an authoritative sense,
because in no case clothed with full legislative
sanction; but possessing, nevertheless, the weight

376 Naval Administration and Warfare

which attaches to the utterances of those who
both by personal ability and official position are
recognized as competent interpreters. Such enun-
ciations, ex cathedra, have the force of judicial
decisions, accepted as precedents to a degree
dependent upon the particular person, or upon
subsequent general acceptance. Not in every
case have the positions of American administra-
tions in this matter been endorsed by their suc-
cessors or the public.

It is vain, therefore, to argue narrowly concern-
ing what the Monroe Doctrine is, from the pre-
cise application made of it to any one particular
emergency. Nor can there be finality of definition,
antecedent to some national announcement, for-
mally complete, which it is to be hoped will never
be framed ; but which, if it were, would doubtless
remain liable to contrary interpretations, sharing
therein a fate from which neither the enactments
of legislatures nor the Bull of a Pope can claim
exemption. The virtue of the Monroe Doctrine,
without which it would die deservedly, is that,
through its correspondence with the national
necessities of the United States, it possesses an in-
herent principle of life, which adapts itself with
the flexibility of a growing plant to the successive
conditions it encounters. One of these conditions
of course is the growing strength of the nation

The Monroe Doctrine 377

itself. As Doctor Johnson ungraciously said of
taxing Americans for the first time, " We do
not put a calf to the plough; we wait till he is
an ox." The Monroe Doctrine, without breach
of its spirit, can be made to bear a burden to
which the nation a hundred years ago was un-
equal; but also, as our present Chief Magistrate
has wisely warned us, if we now propose to assume
a load, we must see to it that the national strength
is organized to endure it. That also is a matter of
national poUcy, quite as important as the Doc-
trine itself.

For these reasons it is more instructive, as to
the present and future of the Monroe Doctrine, to
consider its development by successive exhibitions
in the past than to strive to cage its free spirit
within the bars of a definition attempted at any
one moment. Such an attempt the present
writer certainly will not make. The international
force of the proposition lies in its evolution, sub-
stantially consistent, broadening down from prec-
edent to precedent; not in an alleged finality.

The aversion manifested by the American
government of the War of Independence towards
any attempted restoration of French dominion
in Canada, may be justly considered a premo-
nition of the Monroe Doctrine, anticipatory of
the ground taken by both Monroe and Canning

378 Naval Administration and Warfare

against a transfer of Spanish colonies to any
other European Power. At the earlier period
no remonstrance was raised against such trans-
fers of West India islands, which occurred fre-
quently during both that war and those of the
French Revolution and Napoleonic period. The
cession of Louisiana by Spain to France, in 1801,
excited the keenest susceptibilities. It is bootless
to surmise how far resistance might have been
carried; the inoperativeness of the transaction
did not permit the full consequences to develop.
Objection, however, appears to have turned upon
the more immediate and special motive of the
substitution of a strong Power for a weak one,
in control of an artery of trade essential to our
people, rather than upon the formulated dogma
that American territory was not matter for political
exchange between European states. Moreover, it
needed no broad maxim, wide-reaching in ap-
plication, to arouse popular feeling, and guide
national action, in a matter of such close and
evident importance. Repulsion was a matter
of instinct, of feeling, which did not need to give
account of itself to reason. The Louisiana ques-
tion laid its hand upon the heart of the nation.
It concerned the country, not the hemisphere;
and in principle did not lead out beyond itself,
pointing to further action. It had finality.

The Monroe Doctrine 379

The real stepping-stone by which national in-
terest advanced to hemispheric considerations
was Cuba. From every circumstance this island
was eminently fitted to point the way of the
future; to be the medium, and to mark the
transition from a strictly continental policy to
one that embraced the hemisphere. Cuba is
larger by one third than Ireland, and lies across
the approach to the Gulf coast of the United
States as Ireland does those to Great Britain
from the Atlantic. It possessed in a very high
degree the elements of power, from its position,
size, and resources, which involved immense
possibility for development of strength. Its in-
trinsic value was therefore very great; but further,
while it had relations to our continental territory
only less important than the lower course of the
Mississippi, it nevertheless did not belong to the
continent, to which the Jeffersonian school of
thought, in power from 1801 to 1825, would
strictly confine national expansion. The point
where a powerful navy would be needed to main-
tain the integrity of the national possessions
marked the limit of advance in the theory of
Jefferson. Nevertheless, to him also, minimizing
possibly the need of a fleet to ensure access over
so narrow a strip of sea, " the addition of Cuba
to our confederacy is certainly exactly what is

380 Naval Administration and Warfare

wanted to round our power as a nation to the
point of its utmost interest." To prevent its
falling as yet into the hands of any other European
Power, he expressed to Monroe in 1823 his ap-
proval of entering with Great Britain into a joint
guarantee to preserve the island to Spain; for
this, he argued, would bind the most dangerous
and most suspected Power. On subsequent
information, however, that Great Britain had
stated positively that she would not acquire for
herself any Spanish colony under the present
distress of Spain, he retracted this opinion; for
why, said he, by engaging in joint guarantee,
concede to her an interest which she does not
otherwise possess .? Before this, however. Great
Britain had offered to assure the island by her
own sole action, oa condition of Spain acknowl-
edging the independence of her Continental
colonies; thus constituting for herself an interest
from which Jefferson would have debarred the
consent of the United States.

To such a point anxiety for American ends,
and consciousness of American lack of organized
strength, would then carry a practical statesman
of keen American instincts. To join with a
European state in guaranteeing an American in-
terest was not yet an anachronism. A like anxiety
and a like consciousness were responsible for

The Monroe Doctrine 381

the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty, which proved so
fertile a source of diplomatic contention and
national ill-will in later days. Monroe's Secre-
tary of State, John Quincy Adams, the con-
temporary and survivor of Jefferson, had clearer
views and stronger purpose. Recognizing in
Cuba an importance to the United States scarcely
inferior to any part of the then existing Union,
he held that there were still numerous and for-
midable objections to territorial dominion beyond
sea. The aim of his policy therefore was that
Spain should retain Cuba; but when he suc-
ceeded Monroe in the Presidency, in 1825, having
received the suggestion of a joint guarantee by
Great Britain, France, and the United States, upon
the condition of Spain acknowledging the inde-
pendence of the Spanish-speaking continent, he
replied merely that the matter would be held
under advisement, and followed this in 1826 by
an express refusal : " We can enter into no stipu-
lations by treaty to guarantee the islands." At the
same time it was clearly stated that " the United
States would not consent to the occupation of
Cuba and Porto Rico by any other European
Power than Spain, under any contingency what-
ever." Persistence and advance on this line
are indicated by the words of Webster, when
Secretary of State in 1843. "The Spanish Gov-

382 Naval Administration and Warfare

ernment has been repeatedly told that the United
States would never permit the occupation of
Cuba by British agents or forces upon any pretext;
and that, in the event of any attempt to wrest
it from her, she might rely upon the whole mili-
tary and naval resources of the nation to aid in
preserving or recovering it." In 1851 a farther
advance in definition is marked. An intimation
was received that Great Britain and France
would give orders to their squadrons in the West
Indies to protect the coasts of Cuba from fili-
bustering expeditions, fitted out in the United
States. Such an action, it was replied, " could
not but be regarded by the United States with
grave disapproval, as involving on the part of
European sovereigns combined action of protect-
orship over American waters."

By this time the discovery of gold in California,
and the developing interest of the Pacific, had con-
stituted the Isthmus a second stepping-stone, as
Cuba had been the first, leading the United States
to recognize an external territorial interest; not
indeed extra-continental, but much more severed
from her approach by natural and military ob-
stacles than ever Cuba could be. The Clayton-
Bulwer Treaty, framed in 1850, was the outward
sign of a far-reaching interest, that embraced with
the Isthmus all the Caribbean regions through

The Monroe Doctrine 383

which lay the road to it. Of this an indication
was given by a renewed proposal, made in concert
by Great Britain and France, that they with the
United States should enter into a joint disclaimer
of all intent, now or hereafter, to obtain posses-
sion of Cuba. The reply to this, given in De-
cember, 1852, was that to enter into such a com-
pact " would be inconsistent with the princi-
ples, the tradition, and the policy of the United
States." The proposition involved in fact an
alliance, similar in principle to that by which the
great Powers of Europe guaranteed the settle-
ment of Vienna; and its being made implied a
sense of a balance of power and interests in the
American hemisphere, in which European gov-
ernments would form a preponderant constituent.
The administration of that day had no desire
to get Cuba, for it apprehended from it serious
peril to the Union of the States, which had just
passed with difficulty through one of those crises
that presaged the great war of 1861 to 1865. In
1853 the opposite party came into power, identi-
fied with the policy of strengthening the institution
of slavery. To that end the acquisition of Cuba
became a prominent object; not with the simple
view, held by Jefferson and Adams, of rounding
off and securing the national domain, but to
hold and control a slave region, the present con-

384 Naval Administration and Warfare

ditions and future promise of which were believed
to imperil the system in the Southern States.

The nation was already entered upon the rapids
which swept it down to sectional war and revolu-
tion. Nevertheless, during this period was suc-
cessfully fought out the diplomatic battle with
Great Britain concerning the Mosquito Coast
and the Honduras Bay islands. That the Clay-
ton-Bulwer Treaty secured to Nicaragua and
Honduras the surrender of these, the British
title to which was disputed, had been the belief
of the United States. This was the quid pro
quo for her departure from traditional policy,
by entering into a joint guarantee of an Ameri-
can canal, and of territory belonging to an Amer-
ican State. She was already, by treaty with
Colombia, sole guarantor of transit across the
Isthmus of Panama, and would have preferred
to be such in the case of the Nicaraguan Canal;
but the claim of Great Britain to the Mosquito
Coast, though denied by the United States, in-
volved the Atlantic terminus — San Juan, or
Greytown. It was a question of fight or com-
promise; and the United States, though power-
ful for many reasons as a weight in international
balances, was not yet strong enough to go to
war over a disputed title. The concession which
she understood herself to have made was that

The Monroe Doctrine 385

of accepting a joint guarantee with a European
Power for an American interest and enterprise;
the concession she was to receive was the aban-
donment of British political control over the
regions mentioned. To her surprise she found
that the British understanding was not that they
would abandon what they had, but that they
would not press their tenure beyond that actually
enjoyed. The controversy terminated in the prev-
alence of the United States contention; so that
in i860 the President was able to report to Con-
gress a settlement perfectly satisfactory to him.
In this prolonged discussion the influence of
the Monroe Doctrine was not only evident, but
predominant. Alike in what it knowingly sur-
rendered, — the privilege of sole guarantee, —
and in what it obtained — the relinquishment
of a doubtful title to American territory — the
spirit of the Doctrine was consciously and con-
tinuously in the minds of the American statesmen
and people; and there can be little doubt that
the general principle, as distinguished from
sensitiveness over particular incidents, gained
decisively both in definiteness and depth of im-
pression. There was advance from theory to
action, even if action had been hmited to verbal
insistence; and the outcome was positive, if
not wholly satisfactory on the score of our own

386 Naval Administration and Warfare

concessions. The subsequent intervention of
Louis Napoleon in Mexico came most aptly to
confirm this result. Nothing could have been
more opportune. The principle became concrete
in a striking instance. The interference of a
European ruler with the internal affairs of an
American state had gone to the point of over-
throwing its government, and establishing a
monarchy in its place ; and this not only happened
just across the border, but coincided with the
immense organization of force left by the War
of Secession. Action here was yet more positive
and convincing. Again the United States ob-
tained by pressure the restitution of American
control over American territory, asking no com-
pensation beyond the satisfaction of principle
vindicated.

The realization of power, forced upon national
consciousness by the prodigious exertions of the
War of Secession, could not but be felt in sub-
sequent external policy. Of this the Monroe
Doctrine was a leading element. From its enun-
ciation in 1823 it had grown slowly to 1850, the
year of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The accept-
ance in this instrument of a joint guarantee with
a European State over American territory was
felt to be in violation of its general spirit, and
was substantially an admission of national weak-

The Monroe Doctrine 387

ness, of which the compromise measures of the
same year were an internal indication. The
foundations of the Union were shaking. At
nearly the same moment, 1850-51, the United
States co-operated with France and Great Britain
to compel peace between Haiti and Santo Do-
mingo. These steps, scarcely consistent with the
tradition, were under the same political adminis-
tration, although the death of President Taylor
involved a change in head and members. Shortly
before its close in 1853, the Secretary of State, in
a paper that commanded wide approval, used
words which have value as indicating the point
so far reached by national vision:

It has been a steady rule of our policy to avoid as far as
possible all disturbance of existing political relations of the
West Indies. We have felt that any attempts on the part of any
of the great maritime powers to obtain exclusive advantages
in any one of the islands would be apt to be followed by others,
and to end in converting the archipelago into a theatre of
national competition.

This was a policy of marking time, the de-
parture from which at the present day is evident,
— if the United States is to be reckoned among
maritime powers. An advance in position was
indeed close at hand. The exigency of the Isth-
mus, already felt, was about to invoke a fresh

388 Naval Administration and Warfare

assertion of the predominant political interest
of the nation against European influence there;
both in general, as American territory, and in
particular, as the line of communication between
our Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Point was given
to this, and its importance emphasized to the
national consciousness during this decade, by the
prolonged discussion over the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, which centred attention upon the re-
lations of the Isthmus to the Monroe Doctrine.
If one administration in 1856 suggested a joint
guarantee for the neutrality of the transit zone,
its successor in 1857 hastened to afl&rm that such
a procedure, in common with other Powers,
was inconsistent with the policy of the United
States; and the President in successive messages
strongly urged the purchase of Cuba.

Despite occasional inconsistencies, the general
tendency is manifest throughout. The period
1 850-1 860 was one of suspended action, but of
rapid progress in the realm of idea. Opinion
was expanding, and hardening into conviction;
but the anxieties and uncertainties attending
incipient civil convulsion are unfavorable to
external effectiveness. The return to quiet was
not merely to former conditions, but to vastly
enlarged conception of national interests and
strength. The constraint upon Napoleon III.

The Monroe Doctrine 389

to leave Mexico, in 1867, was the act of the ad-
ministration that directed the War of Secession.
To it succeeded the Presidency of General Grant,
among whose first utterances is found, in 1869,
that American " dependencies of European Powers
are no longer regarded as subjects of transfer
from one European Power to another." Upon
this advance in position the Secretary of State,
Mr. Fish, a year later commented thus:

This is not a policy of aggression, but it opposes the creation
of European dominion on American soil, and its transfer to
other European Powers; and it looks hopefully to the time
when, by the voluntary departure of European governments
from this continent and the adjacent islands, America shall be
wholly American. It does not contemplate forcible intervention
in any legitimate contest; but it protests against permitting
any such contest to result in increase of European power or
influence.^

This hope of a voluntary departure was not
infrequently expressed by the same Secretary to
the British Minister, 1869-71, during the dis-
cussions antecedent to the Treaty of Washington;
and it was grounded in part at least upon the
well-known disposition then of many British states-
men to foster the detachment of the colonies
from the mother country. On American lips

I My italics.

390 Naval Administration and Warfare

the words were scarcely more than a pious as-
piration, towards conditions which would remove
still further the chance of European entangle-
ments. Though congruous in spirit, they form
no part of the Monroe Doctrine, which in origin
was, and in scope still is, essentially conservative,
not revolutionary; expressly disclaiming, indeed,
all purpose to infringe existing conditions.

The national consciousness of a peculiar and
critical relation to the Central American isthmus
is reflected in another utterance of Secretary
Fish:

No attack upon the sovereignty of New Granada has taken
place since the [guarantee] treaty of 1846, though this Depart-
ment has reason to believe that one has been on several occasions
threatened, but has been averted by a warning from this Gov-
ernment as to its obligations under the treaty.

The position thus indicated was maintained
by following administrations, which laid especial
stress upon the isthmian conditions. These had
become the focus, upon which converged all the
national feelings and policy which united to
elicit the Monroe Doctrine. Particular indis-
position was expressed to any joint guarantee:

The President (1881) is constrained to say that the United
States cannot take part in extending an invitation for a joint

The Monroe Doctrine 391

guarantee, and to state with entire frankness that the United
States would look with disfavor at an attempt at concert or
political action by other Powers in that direction.

It was joint guarantee, together with joint
disclaimer of acquiring future tenure over any
part of Central America in order to control the
canal, that brought the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
into conspicuous disfavor; probably as seeming
to imply equality of political interest between the
United States and the other guaranteeing and
self-denying Power. The equality does not exist,
and apparent admission by ourselves was even
more distasteful than its suggestion by others.
It was, as has been said, " a consent to violate
the traditional and time-honored policy of the
country." Increasing discontent in the United
States, and the logic of events affecting the re-
lations of nations, led to the supersession of
this treaty by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, rati-
fied by the United States Senate, December i6,
1901. By this the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was
" superseded " by name ; the construction, regu-
lation and management of the Canal was left in
the hands of the United States, solely and entirely,
with the reservation of its neutralization upon
terms already applying to the Suez Canal; and
the responsibility of safe-guarding the Canal and
enforcing neutrality was to her alone intrusted.

392 Naval Administration and Warfare

Though necessarily traced only in outline,
the Monroe Doctrine is seen to be a policy sub-
stantially consistent throughout, manifesting ad-
vance in expression and expansion in application;
both proofs of essential vitality. Yet, neglecting
the occasional fluctuations to which all progress
is Hable, it may fairly be said that the entire
history is contained, as in a seed, in a definition
of Monroe's, rarely quoted, of the year (1824)
follov^ing the one so v^idely known :

The deep interest we take in their [the Spanish colonies] in-
dependence, which we have acknowledged, and in their enjoy-
ment of all the rights incident thereto, especially in the very
important one of instituting their own governments, has been
declared. ... It is impossible for European governments to
interfere in their concerns, especially in those alluded to, with-
out affecting us; indeed the motive which might induce such
interference in the present state of the war would appear to
be equally applicable to us.

This does not indeed explicitly state every several
proposition of subsequent administrations; but
of those which have remained, endorsed by the
general consent of the nation, all are to be found
in germ, though not in development, in the above
words. Though firm as well as clear, they bear
the impress of national immaturity and conse-
quent weakness. The fear, known to have been
entertained by some of Monroe's Cabinet, that

The Monroe Doctrine 393

the motives impelling the Holy Alliance to in-
tervene in South America might entail similar
steps towards the United States, would doubtless
be scouted now; but the wary attitude of to-day,
with its increased scope of assertion, simply
reproduces what in the earlier period was appre-
hension.

It is considered by the United States essential
to her interests and peace to withstand the be-
ginnings of action which might lead to European
intervention in the internal concerns of an Amer-
ican state, or render it contributive in any way
to the European system, a makeweight in the
balance of power, a pawn in the game of Euro-
pean international politics; for such a condition,
if realized, brings any European contest to this
side of the Atlantic; and the neighborhood of
disputes, as of fire, is perilous. A rumor
of the transfer of a West India island, or such
an occurrence as the difficulty between Venez-
uela, Germany, and Great Britain, engages
instant and sensitive attention. This does
not imply doubt of the wisdom and firmness
of the government, but indicates an instinctive
political apprehension, not elicited by greater
and immediate interests in quarters external to the
continents. It is remembered that intervention
was contemplated in our own deadly intestine

394 Naval Administration and Warfare

struggle, because of its effect upon European
interests, although only economic; for we were
embarrassed by no political dependence or re-
lation to Europe. Public sentiment intends
that such a danger to the American continents,
the recurrence of which can only be obviated by
the predominant force and purpose of this country,
shall not be indefinitely increased by acquies-
cing in European governments acquiring re-
lations which may serve as occasions for inter-
ference, trenching upon the independence of
action of American states, or upon the integrity
of their territory.

It is evident that for a nation to owe money
to a foreign government, directly or by guarantee,
is a very different political condition to that of
indebtedness contracted in open market to in-
dividuals. It is evident that a disputed boundary
is a perennial source of danger; and of implicit
threat where there is a great difference of strength.
Such an ember might kindle into a flame at a
moment otherwise unpropitious for the United
States to assert its traditional policy; just as the
long-standing Transvaal trouble might very con-
ceivably have been precipitated into war at a
moment most inconvenient to Great Britain. As
it was, her course in other qukrters is believed
to have been embarrassed by the South African

The Monroe Doctrine 395

War. It is the part of wisdom, and substantially
of justice, to exclude such occasions of offence,
or to insist upon time ly settlement where they
exist.

Granting the military effect of the Isthmus and
Cuba upon the United States, it is clear that for
them to contract relations of dependence upon
a European Power would involve the United
States and the same Power at once in a net of
secondary relations, potential of very serious
result. Why acquiesce in such ? But the funda-
mental relations of international law, essential
to the intercourse of nations, are not hereby
contradicted. National rights, which are summed
up in the word independence, have as their cor-
relative national responsibility. Not to invade
the rights of an American state is to the United
States an obligation with the force of law; to
permit no European State to infringe them is
a matter of policy; but as she will not acquiesce
in any assault upon their independence or terri-
torial integrity, so she will not countenance by
her support any shirking of their international
responsibility. Neither will she undertake to
compel them to observe their international obli-
gations to others than herself. To do so, which
has been by some argued a necessary corollary
of the Monroe Doctrine, would encroach on the

396 Naval Administration and Warfare

very independence which that poHtical dogma
defends; for to assume the responsibility which
derives from independence, and can only be
transferred by its surrender, would be to assert a
quasi suzerainty. The United States is inevitably
the preponderant American Power; but she does
not aspire to be paramount. She does not find
the true complement of the Monroe Doctrine
in an undefined control over American States,
exercised by her and denied to Europe. Its
correlative, as forcibly urged by John Quincy
Adams at the time of formulation, and since
explicitly adopted by the national consciousness,
is abstention from interference in questions ter-
ritorially European. These I conceive embrace
not only Europe proper, but regions also in
which propinquity and continuity, or long recog-
nized occupancy, give Europe a priority of interest
and influence, resembling that which the Monroe
policy asserts for America in the American con-
tinents and islands. In my apprehension Europe,
construed by the Doctrine, would include
Africa, with the Levant and India, and the coun-
tries between them. It would not include Japan,
China, nor the Pacific generally. The United
States might for very excellent reasons abstain
from action in any of these last named quarters,
in any particular instance; but the deterrent

The Monroe Doctrine 397

cause would not be the Monroe Doctrine in legiti-
mate deduction.

When this article first appeared, (February,
1903), the English Review in which it was printed
made the comment that " Americans on their
side must recognize that their attitude has made
the relations between European Powers and
South American states — many of which are no
creditable protiges — peculiarly difficult, if not
impossible. . . . Surely, as time goes on, and as
the great Republic increases its strength and re-
sources, the Monroe Doctrine must ultimately
develop the present American ' preponderance'
into an American * paramountcy ' over South
American states. Then power and responsi-
bility will be united, instead of being divided as
they are at present."

I fancy that few American statesmen, of the
Northern continent or of the Southern, would
be willing to admit an approach towards para-
mountcy. Preponderance asserts only a concrete
evident fact : of weight attaching to greater num-
bers, wealth, and consequent immediate resources.
Paramountcy carries an invidious political im-
plication. It is, however, true that within the
last five years development, consecutive hitherto.

398 Naval Administration and Warfare

has progressed in one direction suggested, a
species of divergement, like that of a new branch
thrown out by a tree: the admission that a
twofold responsibility follows, logically and ac-
tually, upon the avowal of purpose to use national
force in case specified conditions should occur.
The Monroe Doctrine has reached the point of
denying to European Powers the international
right of acquiring territory as the result of hos-
tilities, if these be with an American common-
wealth. A dilemma is thus confronted. A
common international right is contested on the
ground of national policy. National policy, it is
true, is as strictly an international right as is the
acquisition of territory by war; but to the one and
the other it is increasingly necessary that they
justify themselves to reason. As the American
Declaration of Independence runs, " A decent
respect to the opinions of mankind " must enter
into determinations. The colonies had a right
to revolt, responsible to themselves only; yet,
to justify their course to the world was not only
politic, but educative to their own consciences.

Five years ago there was pending between
Venezuela and her creditors a contention, which
by the armed demonstration of Germany, Great
Britain, and Italy, resulted in a convention, in-
stituting a commission, that sat at Caracas, to

The Monroe Doctrine 399

adjudicate all the claims against Venezuela.
The question of priority of payment — and that
alone — was referred to the Hague Tribunal,
which decided in favor of the three demon-
strating Powers; much ta the disgust of many
Americans. The interesting point in this trans-
action, as touching the Monroe Doctrine, was
that one of the three nations which took the
action named, Germany, was at pains antece-
dently to express to the American government
that " we consider it of importance to let first of
all the government of the United States know
about our purposes, so that we can prove that
we have nothing else in view than to help those
of our citizens who have suffered damages. . . .
We declare especially that under no circum-
stances do we consider in our proceedings the
acquisition or the permanent occupation of Vene-
zuelan territory." ... If other measures " do not
seem efficient, we would have to consider the
temporary occupation on our part of different
Venezuelan harbor places, and the levying of
duties in those places." '

President Roosevelt in reply accepted the as-
surance thus given. In his Message to Congress
a week before he had said, with apparent reference

'John Bassett Moore's International Law Digest, Vol. VI.
p. 588. My italics.

400 Naval Administration and Warfare

to the Venezuelan situation, " The Monroe
Doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial
relations of any American Power. . . . We do
not guarantee any state against punishment if
it misconducts itself, provided that punishment
does not take the form of the acquisition of
territory by any non-American Power." ' There
can be little doubt, however, that American sen-
sitiveness to proceedings of this character was
increasing; not merely in the government, but
more especially in the government as reflecting
the mind of the people. To the British am-
bassador regret was expressed that " European
Powers should use force against Central and
South American countries, though the United
States could not object to steps taken for redress
of injuries, provided that no acquisition of territory
was contemplated. " "

The Venezuelan incident elicited also the
presentation to the United States government,
by that of the Argentine Republic, of a proposed
" Doctrine," which has been called by the name
of Calvo, the Argentine publicist who formu-
lated it; and likewise by that of Drago, the
minister who presented it. The principle ad-
vocated by this doctrine was " that the public

' Moore, Vol. VI. p. 590.
" Ibid. p. 592.

The Monroe Doctrine 401

debt cannot occasion armed intervention, or even
the actual occupation [temporary or permanent]
of the territory of American nations by a European
Power." Drago's letter invited a declaration to
that effect, with the authority and prestige of the
United States. ' Such a pronouncement would
have been a very serious addition to the Monroe
Doctrine; for it would have committed the
United States, upon its sole responsibility, to the
forbiddal of measures heretofore sanctioned by
international law, and purposed, if necessary, in
the Venezuelan case. No alternative means of
reparation was suggested, except patience on
the part of creditors.

Close upon the Venezuelan incident has fol-
lowed the interposition of the United States in
the financial affairs of the Dominican Republic;
consequent, it is true, upon the request, and
therefore upon the formal initiative of the Domin-
ican government itself. The action of the United
States has thus been one of friendly offices, in their
most inoffensive nature. The case is somewhat
unique in its distinguishing features; for, owing
to the frequency of revolutions, unequalled even
in Spanish American countries, a Dominican
government had been often little more than the

^ Moore, Vol. VI. pp. 592-593. The several propositions
of M. Drago are there summarized.

402 Naval Administration and Warfare

temporarily successful revolutionist. Still, by in-
ternational law the government recognized is the
government internationally. Political anarchy
had led to financial anarchy; and by reciprocal
action financial anarchy promoted political, for
a government to be strong must command money.
A revolution, successful or not, depended for
momentary maintenance upon the possession
of a sea port and levying there the import dues,
which the regular government thus lost. By
the successive — or simultaneous — mismanage-
ments of governments, regular and revolutionary,
the debts of the republic had reached a figure
which, whether as to interest or principal, could
be discharged only by an administration which
should be secure as well as skilful. Both American
and European creditors were clamoring for pay-
ment. The only means to insure this was a
settled possession of the ports of entry, to which
no Dominican Government was adequate. Such
general possession by another State would be
political intervention, and occupancy; which,
while temporary in name, must from the amount
of debt to be discharged be so prolonged as to
suggest permanency. We have before us the
example of occupancy drifting into permanency
in Egypt; where the wish of one party in England
certainly was to terminate quickly the occupa-

The Monroe Doctrine 403

tion which to this day still exists, with no prospect
of speedy conclusion.

Such intervention in Asiatic or African com-
munities has both precedent and necessity in its
favor. It has been just in principle, righteous in
act, and expedient in issue. In America, and
by a non-American State, it runs up against the
Monroe Doctrine, except where occupancy is
avowedly and evidently temporary. The United
States in the case of Venezuela had regretted, but
not objected to, a step concerning which assur-
ances had been given, and a probable end was
discernible. No such near probability existed
in Santo Domingo, where at the same time con-
ditions were unbearable and insoluble. The
question loomed on the horizon, — and above
it, — Could the United States refuse to permit
an indefinite occupancy of ports, in order to
receive the duties, and do no more than refuse ?
or would she by such refusal incur a responsi-
bility that must be faced ? In fact, though no
threat of war was heard, or made, refusal would
give just cause for a foreign action, which ulti-
mately might necessitate armed resistance; that
is. War.

President Roosevelt in a message to the Senate
of February 15, 1905, transmitting the protocol
concluded with the Dominican Republic, said.

404 Naval Administration and Warfare

" In view of our past experience and our knowl-
edge of the actual situation of the Republic,
a definite refusal by the United States Govern-
ment to take any effective action looking to the
relief of the Dominican Republic, and to the
discharge of its own duty under the Monroe Doc-
trine, can only be considered as an acquiescence
in some such action by another government."
If, under the Monroe Doctrine, no duty rests of
establishing political or financial order in an Ameri-
can State, the words italicized seem none the less
to assert the duty of opposition to European
intervention; and this is again intimated in the
same message. The proposed measures " se-
cure the Dominican Republic against over-seas
aggression. This in reality entails no new obli-
gation upon us; for the Monroe Doctrine means
precisely such a guarantee on our part." '

Under the circumstances, and by the request
of the Dominican government, the custom houses
of the republic have been placed under the admin-
istration of the United States; with stipulations
as to the distribution of the revenues between
the Dominican government and its creditors,
European and American. A near precedent
for this step existed in an analogous agreement
made a short time before with the United

' Moore, Vol. VI, pp. 526, 527.

The Monroe Doctrine 405

States, by which the custom houses at two ports
had been placed in charge of an American fiscal
agent, to insure payment of specific dues to
American creditors, as fixed by a committee of
arbitrators. The present arrangement went into
operation, substantially, March 31, 1905, when the
President of the Dominican Republic appointed an
American citizen General Receiver of customs,
with specified powers and obligations. The treaty,
which for the time of its duration makes the
United States the financial agent for the Republic
in the receipt and management of customs dues,
was not ratified until May, 1907. Under its terms
the President of the United States has appointed
the Receiver. The political result has been to
promote internal quiet, by disabling would-be
revolutionists from supplying themselves with
money through the customs. The financial results
have been a cessation in the increase of the
public debt; the promotion of necessary public
improvements; and the accumulation in the Re-
public's treasury of a fund of over three million
dollars.

An end, however beneficent, does not neces-
sarily justify the means; but, independent of
the fact that the action of the United States was
by request, the extremity of the occasion, which
is the justification of the remedy, is sufficiently

406 Naval Administration and Warfare

shown by the reluctance and refusal of the United
States to interfere, on one side or the other,
with previous forcible reclamations of debt from
American communities by European govern-
ments. It neither withstood the reclamation, nor
undertook to interfere with the debtor nation's
management of its internal affairs, in order to
increase its ability to pay, and by such means
to remove the cause for European action. On
the one hand it decHned to associate itself with
such action, on the other to acquiesce in payment
by cession of territory under any form threatening
permanency; both in the spirit of the Monroe
Doctrine. With this reservation, the United
States hitherto had simply stood aside, leav-
ing the parties to reach an arrangement, because
such an issue seemed probable. No other
action, nor pre-determination, was called for
before a case presented itself where no promise
of satisfactory solution within the limits of the
Monroe Doctrine could be seen. Such a case
arose at last in Santo Domingo.

The species of development marked by the
Santo Domingo incident is evident, logical, and
irresistible. The stage reached may reasonably
be deplored, as may every increase of national
responsibility, however unavoidable; but in the
instinctive aversion of the American people to

The Monroe Doctrine 407

international meddling, and in their profound,
and indeed exaggerated, belief in the capacity
of all peoples in general to manage adequately
their own affairs, will be found a sound coun-
teractive to precipitate or unconciliatory action.
The request of the Dominican Government in
the particular instance was but the repetition
of similar advances made before; action there-
fore was neither hasty nor coercive; but it
is impossible reasonably to gainsay the state-
ment which appears in the opening paragraphs
of President Roosevelt's Message:

" It has for some time been obvious that those who profit
by the Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities
along with the rights which it confers; and that the same state-
ment appHes to those who uphold the Doctrine. ... It is in-
compatible with international equity for the United States
to refuse to allow other Powers to take the only means at their
disposal of satisfying the claims of their creditors, and yet to
refuse, itself, to take any such steps." '

There is in the treatment of the Dominican
incident continuity of principle, but there is
also more than simple progress. Monroe's as-
sertion, that the American continents were not
thereafter to be considered subjects for European
colonization, for instance, develops not only

' Moore, VI. p. 519.

408 Naval Administration and Warfare

successively but obviously. In the hands of
President Grant (1870) it has become that an
existing colony may not be transferred to another
European state; with President Cleveland, that
an existing colony may not be extended at the
expense of a neighbor; with President Roose-
velt that territory may not be acquired as the
result of hostilities. The interposition in Santo
Domingo is not so much a corollary of the original
proposition, — an obvious consequence, — as it
is a turn in a river, or a divergence, resembling
that of a new branch put forth by a tree. That
a policy framed to assure the independence of
certain states should lead irresistibly to interfer-
ence in functions attendant upon independence is
something of a paradox; but paradoxes are not
amusing only, but instructive. In objecting to
" the extension of the European system to any
portion of the American hemisphere," the Monroe
Doctrine had in view several dangers; one of
which was the interference of stronger states
with weaker, as in Europe. ' In " European
system " the noun as well as the adjective had
importance. But from this beginning the logic
of events has inevitably developed the necessity
of interference by American Powers — not nec-

' See Dana's Wheaton, Summary of Monroe Doctrine.
Moore VI. p. 597. Also pp. 402, 403; Monroe's Message.

The Monroe Doctrine 400

essarily the United States — with one another,
and in one another's affairs, in cases which it
may reasonably be beheved will always be very
exceptional and extreme, but are not impossible
of occurrence. And this is not the logic of events
only, but of principles. The Doctrine has not
been merely the sport of circumstances; for its
essential principle was to insure American safety
and peace by excluding European intervention.
Consequently, conditions which tend towards
such intervention, and would justify it, morally
and internationally, must by the American nations
be remedied; if not by the state responsible,
then by others. This end was involved in the
beginnings, though it was not then obvious.

If this paradox then be a legitimate develop-
ment, the objection that the Monroe Doctrine
is not now the Doctrine of Monroe has no standing
ground in fact or principle. To state the qualities
of an apple and of an apple tree is to formulate a
series of paradoxes; but all the same the apple is
the fruit of the tree. The name Monroe Doctrine
is therefore accurate, as well as serviceable. It is
not only convenient, as a heading under which to
group a series of national attitudes. It is exact,
because it expresses a continuity which is that of
life ; of a vital principle, fruitful in consequences
just because it is alive.

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